Cosmology is the branch of astronomy that deals with the universe.[1][2]
NASA defines cosmology as "The study of the structure and changes in the present universe".[3] Another definition of cosmology is "the study of the universe, and humanity's place in it".[4]
Modern cosmology is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which brings together observational astronomy and particle physics.
Though the word cosmology is recent (first used in 1730 in Christian Wolff's Cosmologia Generalis), the study of the universe has a long history.