Radio astronomy is cool because it revealed:The 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for pioneering radio astronomy from the late 40s onwards done at the University of Cambridge which was an epicenter of early research in that area, leading to the creation of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in 1958.
- some very interesting new types of astronomical objects that were not as noticeable in the visible spectrum notably:
- quasars: quasars are extremely redshifted, which means by Hubble's law that they are very far from Earth, so the fact that we could see them at all meant they must have produced immense amounts of light
- pulsars: scientists thought they had found extraterrestrial life when they saw these regularly pulsating signal sources!
- cosmic microwave background which is a major evidence for the Big Bang
- radio wavelengths penetrate Earth's atmosphere better than the visible spectrum making it easier to make ground-based observations
New to topics? Read the docs here!