astro, aster (Level I)

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are countless asteroids, tiny terrestrial planets. Cosmos

Monks discovered that the astrolabe, an Arabic invention, was a handy tool for keeping track of time in the evening, helping them keep their prayers on schedule. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

The best antidote to astrology in particular and to pseudoscience in general is, as Carl Sagan has written, real science, whose wonders are as amazing but have the added virtue of probably being real. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

But even just a cursory look into the field of astrophysics can make it seem that below each new forward step is an abyss of unknowns. The Washington Post

In 1965 several astrophysicists at Princeton University were calculating what would have happened right after the big bang. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Polyakov was one of 125 cosmonauts and astronauts to visit the space station, which hosted 17 space expeditions. Women in Space

On earth, astronomers are hindered by electric lights and radio signals that pollute the night sky, but on the back side of the moon astronomers could view the universe without interference. Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story

In the 1960s, however, interest in the large-scale problems of astronomy and cosmology was revived by a great increase in the number and range of astronomical observations brought about by the application of modern technology. A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays

During the peak of ancient astronomy, Greek astronomical tables regularly employed zero; its symbol was the lowercase omicron, o, which looks very much like our modern-day zero, though it’s probably a coincidence. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

By the 1990s the term exobiology was barely adequate to convey the scope of scientists’ questions, and the effort was re-branded as “astrobiology,” a full-on merger of astronomy and biology.Salon

Cornell University astrobiologists have devised a novel way to determine ocean temperatures of distant worlds based on the thickness of their ice shells, effectively conducting oceanography from space.Science Daily