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Glossary term: Cosmología

Description: El término «cosmología» deriva de las palabras griegas kosmos (armonía u orden) y logos (pensamiento o razón). La cosmología, como disciplina, tiene sus raíces en la filosofía y la religión; diversas culturas de todo el mundo cuentan con sus propias cosmologías, cuyo objetivo es interpretar y dar sentido al Universo. A lo largo de los años, la cosmología ha evolucionado hasta convertirse en una ciencia observacional de precisión. Esto ha sido posible gracias al desarrollo de observatorios avanzados, tanto terrestres como espaciales, junto con trabajos teóricos pioneros y simulaciones por ordenador o computadora. La cosmología, como disciplina científica, tiene como objetivo comprender la historia evolutiva, la formación, la estructura y la evolución futura del Universo en su conjunto a las escalas más grandes, mediante les estudio de los mecanismos físicos fundamentales que operan en su interior.

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Term and definition status: The original definition of this term in English have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher
The translation of this term and its definition is still awaiting approval

The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".

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The Hubble Ultra Deep Field showing around 10,000 galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes and colours.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Caption: This awe-inspiring image referred to as the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF), was obtained using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), by combining 800 exposures from 400 orbits of the HST, which equates to 11.3 days of total exposure time. The image shows nearly 10,000 galaxies and was taken in the direction of a patch of sky with the least amount of stars from the Milky Way galaxy in the field of view. The region of sky that the HST observed corresponds to 1/10 the angular size of the Full Moon, which is roughly equal to approximately a 1 millimeter-sized object placed 1 meter away. Every object in the image, except for the bright points with the crosshairs, are galaxies. As a consequence of the speed of light being a constant in a vacuum, the more distant an object, the further back in time we are observing. Therefore, the light from some of the galaxies in the HUDF image is from when the Universe as only a few hundred million years old. The HUDF image takes us through on a journey through space, and also in time.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team credit link

License: CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Reconocimiento 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0) icons


This Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation map is an oval with many patches of different colors as well as finer granulation

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Caption: This image is a representation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation created using data from the Planck satellite. The CMB is the glow left over from when the Universe was approximately 380,000 years old. The early Universe was hot and dense, so the photons from that era were high energy. Due to the expansion of the Universe over 13.8 billion years photons of ""light"" from the early Universe have been stretched to longer wavelengths and are detectable in millimetre wavelengths (microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum). The ""mottled"" pattern in the image is referred to as anisotropies, and it represents very small temperature fluctuations. These fluctuations correspond to regions of slightly different densities, and are essentially the seeds for larger structure in the Universe e.g.: galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the very first stars. The data from the CMB allows various characteristics of the Universe to be derived, for example, composition, shape, age, and allows for certain predictions to be made about the future evolution of the Universe. The shape of the image is the result of a mapping projection, where the entire sky is mapped onto a single flat oval shape called Molleweide projection. The center of the Milky Way galaxy is located at the centre of the image.
Credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration credit link

License: CC-BY-SA-4.0 Creative Commons Reconocimiento-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-SA 4.0) icons

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