The whole mankind has almost spent more than 2000 years to understand the Universe and the solar system that we live in. Researchers since past thousands of years have recorded whatever they came to know about the Universe. The curiosity to know about the universe in a few astronomers has revealed a lot of secrets of heaven. Man from the ancient times always wanted to know about the Universe and explore the space. In the year 1959, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the United States short listed 7 people to be the first astronauts that will travel in the space.

The first project in the history of mankind that allowed the human beings to orbit the earth was the project Gemini and Mercury whose main task was to take a spacecraft to the earth’s orbit, stay and come back safely with the spacecraft to the earth’s surface. The famous Apollo program was initiated in the year 1961 with a mission to land on the moon’s surface. It took several years for research and test flights when finally astronauts Neil Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins in the year 1969 landed on the surface of moon. The flight that landed on the moon successfully was Apollo 11.

After the successful landing of Apollo 11 several quest have been made to moon with spaceflight programs like Apollo-Soyaz, Space Shuttle and Skylab. These all missions were to land on moon but we have never landed on any other planet or object like the Asteroids. NASA has sent a number of unmanned spacecrafts in the solar system to collect information and on the planets too like mars. There is a long list of unmanned space vehicles like the Viking 1 and 2, Mariner, Pioneer 10 and 11, Explorer, Magellan, Venus 1 and 2, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Lunar Orbiter, Clementine and Surveyor.

For centuries man has rediscovered himself and the world around him by gazing at the stars. It is almost as if man had an intuitive feel about the vastness of knowledge that is stored within these stars. Gradually as more and more familiarity evolved and mankind started on a path of discovery of the hidden knowledge of these shiny sparkles of light through the science of Astronomy. Through the science of Astronomy we can know more about the process of the creation of the stars as well as the history of the universe. Through the various sophisticated processes that are involved in the science of astronomy, we can also measure the distance of separation of one star from the other as well as forecast the time when they will be destroyed.

As mankind learned more about the stars through Astronomy and its allied sciences, the use of imagination was merged with this newly gained knowledge through which we could also visualize shapes and characters in the various groups of stars. We named them in accordance with these characteristics and termed them to be scientifically as constellations. This was the perfect blend of the science and the arts and allowed us to become even more involved in this process of getting to know more about our celestial neighbors.

The science of Astronomy also allows us to gain enough knowledge about the stars through which we can differentiate between stars and celestial bodies which are not starts. Through this knowledge we can also identify other stars, even though visually they may look different. An example of this can be the Sun. though visually very different from a normal star, yet the Sun has been proved to be, beyond a doubt, a star… through the study of Astronomy.