Radio Surveys

Abstract

We have covered the first three eras in astronomy in one chapter each. The fourth era—what one might call the Electromagnetic Era—will require six chapters. This is the era in which astronomers started to collect and study celestial radiation at wavelengths far outside the range of visible light. The dawn of this era came in the 1930s with the development of radio astronomy, but because many kinds of electromagnetic radiation are blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere, most of the other new disciplines had to wait for the space age, which started in the 1960s. In this chapter we will discuss radioastronomy: the other wavebands will be covered in Chapters 6 to 10.