Top 102 Astronomers Quotes & Sayings

UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public. In fact, they're lower. You say, why is that so? Well, because we know what the hell we're looking at!

Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male.

Few sights in science are sadder than astronomers standing in the rain.

You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars.

I meet people on the street who literally chose their careers because they saw 'Back to the Future' and decided they wanted to be scientists or astronomers or engineers.

Astronomers do not commonly use Venereal, in favor of the less contagious-sounding Venutian. Blame the medical community, who snatched the word long before astronomers had any good use for it. I suppose you can't blame the doctors. Venus is the goddess of beauty and love, so she ought to be the goddess of its medical consequences.

Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.

The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.

Astronomers still can't decide what the shape of our universe is. Is it closed and finite, which is to say, is there a countable tally of all the galaxies that exist, even beyond the ones we can see? Or is it infinite? The latter possibility is still on the table.

The astronomers tell us that other planets are gifted with two - four - even nine lavish moons. Imagine the romantic possibilities of nine moons.

What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation.

I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.

A cosmic mystery of immense proportions, once seemingly on the verge of solution, has deepened and left astronomers and astrophysicists more baffled than ever. The crux ... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.

The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal

Physicists and astronomers see their own implications in the world being round, but to me it means that only one-third of the world is asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.

The Astronomer's Drinking Song Astronomers! What can avail Those who calumniate us; Experiment can never fail With such an apparatus.

Thanks to the discoveries of astronomers in the twentieth century, we now know that the heat death is a myth. The heat death can never happen, and there is no paradox.

We forget how recently astronomers figured out what the stars are made of, what makes them shine, how distant they are, how they are born, and whether they remain immutable or evolve and die.

Scriptures were written, not to satisfy our curiosity and make us astronomers, but to lead us to God, and make us saints.

The atmosphere is great for people - it allows us to survive - but it's a real headache for astronomers.

Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

Astronomers can look back in time. We can look at things as they used to be. We have an idea there was a Big Bang explosion 13.7 billion years ago. We have a story of how galaxies and stars were made. It's an amazing story.

Astronomers ought to be able to ask fundamental questions without accelerators.

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

Astronomers ought to be able to ask fundamental questions without accelerators

Astronomers who do not draw theistic or deistic conclusions are becoming rare, and even the few dissenters hint that the tide is against them. Geoffrey Burbidge, of the University of California at San Diego, complains that his fellow astronomers are rushing off to join 'the First Church of Christ of the Big Bang.'

Among the radio astronomers of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it's only sort-of a joke that the true hallmark of intelligent life is the creation of radio astronomy.

Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things.

The big discoveries raise questions that make astronomers work feverishly and argue with an agitation that verges on rudeness.

It's interesting - Pluto's almost a brand unto itself. It's the farthest. It's the most diminutive of the classical planets. It's been maligned by astronomers. It's always the one with all the question marks in the back of the textbook in the table. I think children identify with it because it's smaller, kind of cute.

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.

[Gauss calculated the elements of the planet Ceres] and his analysis proved him to be the first of theoretical astronomers no less than the greatest of 'arithmeticians.'

I only hope that we shall not wait to adopt the program until after our astronomers have reported a new and unsuspected asteroid moving across their fields of vision with menacing speed. At that point it will be too late!

Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.

Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?

Fred Hoyle was one of the first scientists to become famous on television and radio. It was because he told a dramatic story about the universe - about how amazing it is and the extraordinary discoveries that astronomers like him were making.

Astronomers have discovered a planet that is twice the size of earth and made of diamonds. President Obama says the planet may be inhabited by aliens not paying their fair share.

Britain has still got rather fewer astronomers than many other countries - the French and the Italians, for example. Why is that? I don't think those countries have better brains.

Of course, Sol is a big ball of hot gas, but one that - thanks to its endlessly boiling innards - shakes and vibrates. By studying patterns on the Sun's surface, astronomers can learn much about Sol's internal construction.

I am a Christian which means that I believe in the deity of Christ, like Tycho de Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal… like all great astronomers mathematicians of the past.

Give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite the fact that our world is the poster child for habitability.

Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.

Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,--these are some of our astronomers.

One might think of investment managers as astronomers and CEOs as astronauts. The two roles are radically different with distinct personality traits. Like astronomers, investment managers tend to be introverted, skeptical, and very analytical. CEOs, like astronauts, are the exact opposite, typically being extroverts, optimists, and, well, leaders.

Astronomy is written for astronomers

Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.

We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.

Like many astronomers who use the great telescopes on Mauna Kea, I have participated personally and joyfully in ceremonies to celebrate the profound cosmic understanding that comes from joining ancient Hawaiian navigator traditions with the techniques of modern astronomy.

Astronomers sometimes observe that a star of medium magnitude increases suddenly in size; a star invisible to the naked eye may become very brilliant and visible without any telescope - the appearance of a Nova.

Very few astronomers will be mourned with the same degree of love and admiration as Vera Rubin.

Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.

For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.

You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars

Astronomers are spherical bastards. No matter how you look at them they are just bastards.

John Kerry and Ralph Nader met face-to-face, it was a historic meeting. Astronomers said today their meeting actually created what is called a 'charisma black hole.'

Radio astronomers are aware in the back of their minds that if there are other civilizations out there in space, it might be the radio astronomers who first pick up the signal.

Astronomers are using every technique at their disposal to discover and study asteroids.

The Scriptures were written, not to make us astronomers, but to make us saints.

Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing.

I started out, as most astronomers do, with a university job. But in my generation, women weren't very welcome at universities, and so I found a job in the government. And the government was appreciably more welcoming.