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Asked by 209frcc28 to Connor, Lidunka on 16 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Ananya.
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Connor Macrae answered on 16 Jun 2015:
Well, we can actually observed a good deal just from the Earth, though our atmosphere blocks much of the EM spectrum. We can observe the sun and stars in white light (visible light) as well as in radio wavelengths. There are actually arrays of telescopes across the world tasked with providing 24 hour observations of the Sun (Examples are BiSON and GONG) However, to see greater resolutions we need to go into space. Satellites like SDO (solar dynamics observatory) sit in Earths orbit and provide incredible resolution images of the Sun at all times. The Kepler satellite is similar, however it observes other stars as point sources instead. As they are so far away, the satellite observes a chunk of the sky, where a particular star might take up just one or two pixels on the image. My research is using the data from both of these satellites.
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Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 18 Jun 2015:
@ 209frcc28 As well as all that Connor has said, let’s not forget the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been looking at our universe for the last 20 years. It has recorded some of the most detailed observations ever of our universe, including breath-taking images with remarkable resolution. It has looked at black holes (well, the effects of black holes because we can’t actually see them), and made some amazing observations of the very early universe by looking at things way deep in space (and therefore very far away and therefore very old because it takes light so long to reach us). It is one of the most successful engineering feats of all time (despite a lot of things initially going wrong!). And it is loved by so many.
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