What is Astrophysics?
Astrophysics is a branch of astronomy that analyzes the properties and interactions of cosmological objects based on known physical law. The term is slightly misleading, as anyone who goes into astronomy nowadays must be proficient in physics. It can be said that the field of astrophysics is very similar to the fields of astronomy and cosmology. Astrophysics can be broken down into observational and theoretical astrophysics. There is no such thing as experimental astrophysics because the scales and objects being observed are far too large or far away to experiment on with modern technology. Because light takes time to travel to us on Earth, the most distant regions of the universe are actually windows into the ancient universe, when the universe was far denser and more energetic. Because astrophysics sometimes deals with theories of the early, compact universe, it can overlap strongly with particle physics, which provides predictions of how matter would behave in the ancient universe.
