Astrophysics is the actual science and celestial body of the universe.
Astronomy is more like a religion filled with folklore’s.

Posted by honesthustler, on December 10th, 2008, at 8:24 am. #.

I guess astrophysics is all done in the lab on paper or blackboard done to support the imperical data and explain it in terms of Newtonian and Relativistic equations.

Astronomy also includes experimental field work.

The Astrophysicist or physicist if you will. Einstein, postulates based on math and computations and seeing it in their head and comes up with gravity wells and says the light will shift position when it is close to a gravity well.

The astronomer sees this for real during and eclipse and sets up experiements to try and prove it based on the data and as such the astronomer needs to interpret the data provided by the physicist.

That means they BOTH need to know the same math.

Einstein rarely looked throught a telescope and when he did he was probably more like a kid with a 6″ cellestion seeing Jupiter for the first time.

Clyde Tombough did the math, from the physics he knew about Neptune, Uranus and postulated where PLUTO might be and then he went out and took pictures through telescopes and used a blink microscope to try and find a star that moved and that would be PLUTO.

So he applied both ASTRO PHYSICS and ASTRONOMY

Astronomy is about NAMES of objects.

Astro physics is about labels.

X Y Z

Astronomy gives these names

Neptune, Pluto, Uranus

The math is the sample.

So ASTRONOMY is APPLIED astrophysics at times.

Posted by Earl D, on December 13th, 2008, at 3:58 pm. #.