Radio Astronomy: Observing the Invisible Universe

It’s easy to imagine the first modern humans staring up at the heavens in wonder, their eyes and minds dazzled by a beautiful band of light splashed across the night sky, the ever-changing moon so large and bright, and pinpoints of light in every direction. For a few hundred thousand years, our eyes were our primary astronomical tool, and we used them well. We catalogued and analyzed what we saw, filled in the gaps with powerful stories, applied what we knew of mathematics, and then invented complex tools of stone, metal, and glass to expand our knowledge. Everything we knew about the universe was based on light, that small part of the electromagnetic spectrum detectable by human eyes.
Then one day in the 1930s, a young engineer named Karl Jansky was assigned a task at Bell Labs: What were the sources of radio static that could interrupt transatlantic radio communications? After several years of work, he identified one source as radio waves coming from thunderstorms near and far… and another, from something at the center of the Milky Way. For the very first time, we had detected radiation below the visible part of the spectrum emanating from an astronomical object. For years, astronomers had been frustrated by interstellar dust that blocked their view and limited their
Radio Astronomy: Observing the Invisible Universe takes you on a thrilling journey through the universe with stunning visuals and animations to explain the science of radio astronomy and its astounding discoveries. Your guide is Felix J. Lockman, Ph.D., of the Green Bank Observatory, an active radio astronomer whose great passion for his work is absolutely contagious. As Dr. Lockman explains, radio astronomy is not simply a conglomeration of theories with no practical application to our lives today. While radio astronomy has the potential to one day answer the question of extraterrestrial intelligence, it also allows us to more accurately tell time right here on Earth, study terrestrial plate tectonics, and even get smartphone directions to that great new restaurant.