LaTeX (in its many forms) is widely used in the astronomy community for preparing papers submitted for publication. The different versions of LaTeX all appear to behave in similar fashions, but have (at times) radically different engines at work behind the scenes.
Different mechanisms for invoking LaTeX can include tex, latex, pdflatex, elatex, and many similar permutations.
An excellent array of documents aimed at different levels of experience can be found at the LaTeX project website.