Optical astronomy is essentially the branch of astronomy in which we use telescopes (commonly reflecting or refracting telescopes) to observe celestial bodies. It is still the most "cherished" branch of astronomy, and was essentially the only kind there was until the last century.
One of the interesting things discussed is how the eye collects photons, and can use up certain chemicals after having gazed at an overly bright object. Because optics and opthalmology fascinate me, I liked hearing from the podcast on optical astronomy all the information that related to these topics.
Everything absorbs some colors and reflects others. The color that an object glows depends on two main things. Its temperature, and the way the chemical sensitivities of our eyes take in various mixtures of photons.
A little over half the podcast was about optics, with some ties to the glow of distant planets and the color of the sun, but later on they began to bring about more discussion on these points relating to astronomy.
Oxygen is excited to a specific temperature in different areas of a nebula, which affects the color it gives off. The less collisions of the oxygen molecules that are happening the fuzzier the vision of these bodies will be. Specific elements with specific electron transmissions are also what send color. Honestly, all the different ways we receive color and the different effects of chemical happenings on our eyes confuses me very much.
The atmosphere presents the biggest challenge when we are observing bodies in space. Hot and cold pockets are like lenses changing the path of traveling temperatures which come off as light. That is only one of the ways our atmosphere poses a challenge, especially when the bulk of us use fairly amateur telescopes to capture light.
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