astronomer
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of astronomer
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English; see origin at astronomy, -er 1
Explanation
A scientist who studies the objects in the sky, including planets, galaxies, black holes, and stars, is called an astronomer. These days, the terms astronomer and astrophysicist are used interchangeably, to talk about any physicist who specializes in celestial bodies and the forces that affect them. Astronomers use telescopes and cameras to observe the stars and other objects in the sky, and they often use complicated math to make predictions and solve puzzles about their movements and locations. The Greek root, astronomia, literally means "star arrangement."
Vocabulary lists containing astronomer
Occupations
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Space Science (Astronomy) - Introductory
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astro, aster
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The team, led by University of Michigan astronomer Brooke Kotten, discovered an important clue in the star's chemical makeup.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 16, 2026
"When a satellite crosses what we observe, it makes a bright streak on our image, zapping whatever is behind it," said ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut, who led the study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
"We were stunned to see how asymmetric this disk is," said co-investigator Joshua Bennett Lovell, also an astronomer at the CfA.
From Science Daily ● May 12, 2026
In the 1890s, long-simmering dreams of an inhabited Mars found a foothold in the U.S., fanned by wealthy astronomer Percival Lowell, who built an Arizona observatory.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
The H. G. Wells story featured an astronomer, and this gave Koch a chance to include one, too.
From "Spooked!" by Gail Jarrow
Their findings, published in the July 14 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, help address a question that has challenged astronomers for decades.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026
Lithium offers astronomers a valuable way to investigate planetary engulfment.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 16, 2026
The Warwick team, working with astronomers from the University of Colorado Boulder in the US, was interested in the four nearby systems because of a "substantial radial wobble".
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Radio telescopes are constantly flooded with signals produced on Earth, so astronomers rely on sophisticated software to identify and remove interference before searching for anything unusual.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 2026
Throughout Europe astronomers took a keen interest in what Copernicus had to say, but, with only a very few exceptions, they took it for granted that his account of a moving Earth was simply wrong.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
