

I've described my practice of bazookamancy to two of my astrologer friends. But if you looked hard enough, it was always there. Often you had to look mighty hard to find your answer. The comic was a parable that answered your question. As everyone knew, when you saw one, you stopped and asked it a question. The wrappers were on the ground wherever kids littered. It came wrapped in a little comic strip about Bazooka Joe and his gang. Back then, Bazooka Joe bubble gum was popular. When I was in elementary school, I practiced a form of divination that you could call bazookamancy. If you want to get through to your believing sister-in-law or your uncle in Cincinatti, the way to do it is not to argue physics or astronomy, but to explain why astrology works. Yet there's a reason people continue to rely on horoscopes, and Senior Editor Alan MacRobert explains in Sky & Telescope's Focal Point column just why astrology is still so popular. (This, despite the fact that current horoscopes rely on outdated information!) Why Astrology "Works" In contrast, astrology is now regarded as a pastime and a pseudoscience - though thousands of people around the world still invoke advice from astrologers and astrology publications in making important professional, medical, and personal experiences. Since then, astronomy has evolved into a completely separate field, where predictions about celestial phenomena are made and tested using the scientific method. In doing so, he showed that the same laws that make, say, an apple fall from a tree, also apply to the motions of the celestial sphere. van Loon, National Library of Australia Astrology vs AstronomyĪstrology continued to be part of mainstream science until the late 1600s, when Isaac Newton demonstrated some of the physical processes by which celestial bodies affect each other. Andreas Cellarius's illustration of the Ptolemaic System (17th century), which shows the solar system and signs of the zodiac with the Earth at the center. For several millennia, the desire to improve astrological predictions was one of the main motivations for astronomical observations and theories.

Astrology attempts to study how those positions, motions, and properties affect people and events on Earth. Astronomers examine the positions, motions, and properties of celestial objects.

Astronomy is the study of the universe and its contents outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Though the practices of astrology and astronomy have common roots, there is an important distinction in astrology vs astronomy today.
