What is Astronomy?

            When people think of astronomy, they think of a person looking up at the stars with a telescope and knowing all there is to know about where stars and constellations are.  Though it is partially just a tiny bit of the reality of it, that is all they get to see from outside of that environment.

            When seen in action it is a whole different story but what is it? What drives people to just “look at the stars” for hours on end?  What IS this thing called astronomy? In my opinion, when I hear that we are “looking into our past,” I find that statement incorrect.  We understand that everything we see happened many, many light years ago and is old news over there.  While over hear it is a breakthrough in the study of the stars, I believe that what astronomy does is not look at our past but our future. 

            Sometimes we see something that pleases us for instance the creation of stars in Nebulas such as the Orion Nebula or the Horse Nebula (also located in the constellation Orion).  However, most of the time we find events such as meteor impacts or stars explosions (supernovas) that get us to thinking what are the chance of this happening here?  We see the focus change of what happened in order for this event to occur, into what is happening now that will cause it here.