Astronomy at the millennium

Abstract

This paper will highlight the important developments in astronomy in the last decade of the twentieth century and in the opening years of the twenty-first, On the observational front, the discovery of extra-solar planets, the detection of gamma- ray bursts and studies of the distances of extragalactic supernovae with implications for the expansion of the universe are the major developments highlighted here. On the theoretical front, the paper reports on the speculations in very high energy physics that have implications for cosmology, the role of the cosmological constant and the quasi-steady state cosmology proposed as an alternative to the big bang.