# All Questions

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### What does black hole evaporation correspond to in the accelerating universe / black hole analogy?

In the same way, as a black hole emits Hawking radiation corresponding to its temperature $$T = \frac{\hbar}{r_{BH}}$$ the accelerating universe can be described as all of the stuff falling ...
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### Is it possible to calculate the time of day given latitude, longitude and solar elevation angles (zenith, azimuth, elevation)?

I am trying to determine the time of day of some images I have. I know the lat/lon, the day and year of image. I also know the 3 solar angles (zenith, azimuth, and elevation). Is there MATLAB or ...
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### Could black holes be creators of dark matter?

At the tremendous forces of gravity inside a black hole, can "matter" be transformed into a more degenerate form; "dark matter" (if that truly what dark matter is)? I know the inside of a black hole ...
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### In what form was the space at singularity?

It is somewhat imaginable for all the matter or energy to be condensed in sub-atomic size. But what about space? The space is neither 'matter' nor 'Energy'. If there were no space at singularity ...
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### What is needed to break through the surface of Europa? [closed]

How big does a satelite we send have to be to be able to chrush through the ice layer and dive into the ocean on Europa? If a mission should head there, is this a better way of examining the ocean ...
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### Star names and the HYG Database

Related to Convert coordinates between RA/dec and WGS 84 (SRID=4326). WARNING: I'm a noob in astronomy. After import all stars from HYG Database (http://www.astronexus.com/node/34) I noticed some ...
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### In India, what is the best time to view the geminid meteor shower in 2013

As of the time of writing this question, the meteors should have appeared, but so far I haven't seen any. What time would be the best to view them?
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### Black Holes emitting Hawking radiation

I've read that even light cannot escape from black holes. The speed of light is theoretically predicted to be the escape velocity of a black hole. I've also read that the general notion that nothing ...
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### The life course for a massive star from birth to death using the HR Diagram

could you explain to me the life course for a massive star (30-40 solar masses) from birth to death using the HR Diagram (by showing key events in its life on the HR Diagram)? thanks
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### Calculate apsides without knowing eccentricity

How would one go about determining the apsides of an orbit, knowing only the current distance between the 2 bodies, the orbital velocity, and the period? Every formula I've seen requires eccentricity, ...
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### iteration to cover the whole sky with right ascension, declination, angle

I am sure I get parts of the terminology wrong but if anyone can shed some light in the following: I understand that for a given right ascension (RA) and declination (DEC), one has defined a ray ...
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### Without using absolute magnitudes or isochrones, how might we tell a star's age and evolutionary status?

Usual methods of estimating stellar ages involve isochrone approximations. It can also help to estimate a star's radius by correlating its absolute magnitude with effective temperature and apparent ...
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### Perception of an objects history passing as an observer moves toward it

If a star is 20 light-years away and I look at it through a telescope, what I'm observing is what the star was doing 20 years ago yes? So, if I fix my sight on the star and move toward it (for ...
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### How massive does a planet need to be to create gravitational lensing?

Is it ever possible for starlight to be distorted in a noticeable way from something as small as a planet? I'm guessing that the chances of this working are better on a dense terrestrial planet than ...
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### Any cheap (<100 euro) tools for observing the lines in solar spectrum?

I am now reading the book ''The story of Helium and the Birth of Astrophysics''. I really want to observe the lines (dark or bright) in the solar spectrum. Any easily available tools for an amateur? ...
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### What record do we have of the length of supernovas?

recently I heard an astronomer on the radio claim that the supernova we have observed in our own galaxy lasted about 6 months, while in distant galaxies they last about 7-8 months, due to relativity ...
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### Is the expansion accelerating or Decelerating?

According to Hubble's Law, the farther a galaxy is, the farther it is moving away. But do we take into account the fact that we are actually looking in the past? For example, there are two galaxies A ...
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### How would a planetary defence against comets work?

Mappings of practically all potentially dangerous asteroids is well underway. But comets seem almost hopeless to protect against. How far away are approaching comets detected today? How long time ...
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### Taking Advantage of Time Dilation

According to Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, one's speed in relation to a relatively stationary object would 'slow down' time on the moving object. With this in mind, would it be possible to ...
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Broadband spectrum is one which is inclusive of all the observed wavelength ranges. In the case of the BB spectra of our Sun, there is a sharp (non-differentiable) kink in the curve in the UV-range ...
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### Is the local group bound to the Virgo cluster?

The virgo cluster is currently red-shifted by 0.003 according to Wikipedia; this indicates that the cluster is expanding. Will the cluster's enormous gravity eventually "win" and pull the milky ...
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### Conundrum involving distance to object, universal expansion, age of universe, etc

I was recently reading about a galaxy or quasar (not sure which, so lets just say quasar) where the estimated distance to this thing was some very significant fraction of the age of the universe. ...
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When reading an article on using Jovian moons to calculate longitude, I came across this passage: Periodically, Jupiter eclipses each of the four large moons as they pass into the planet's mammoth ...
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### How do I calculate the velocity dispersion of a galaxy given an integral field spectrograph?

I couldn't find on the web how to get the velocity dispersion and velocity maps of galaxies from the 3D data cube that I get from the integral field spectrograph.
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### Locate asteroid in asteroid belt

I was interested in tracking the orbit of 1986 DA. I couldn't find any resource when I looked. Just for fun, so any help appreciated.
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### How to get the longitude/latitude from solar zenith/azimuth?

How do I get the longitude/latitude from zenith/azimuth? Or how can I position my sun in a 3d application? code extracted from here ...
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### What method is used to calculate the 'quality' of a solar/planetary image?

What sort of algorithm is used to calculate the relative quality of an image, such as is performed by PIPP, Registax, or Avistack? Such applications take planetary or solar images and prior to ...
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### What are the masses of the two stars (given the information provided)?

If anyone would at least be willing to point me in the direction of finding the answer, or help me solve it I'd appreciate it. I don't know how to go about this, and need to know how to solve this on ...
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### Can looking at the sun through solar viewing eclipse shades everyday harm your eyes?

I have a pair of Solar Viewing Eclipse Shades that say "Safe for Direct Solar Viewing" and would like to know if my eyes would be harmed if I looked at the sun everyday for about a minute wearing ...
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### What if the black hole in the center of the galaxy grew faster?

Imagine that hypothetically the black hole in the center of the milky way gradually increased in mass by for example 50% every year. That is exponential increase in mass. Which visual effects would ...
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### Is C/2012 S1 (aka ISON) the fastest comet on record to-date?

This source may be nebulous (no pun intended!) for some. It writes to say Starting at around 95,000mph at the start of this month, Comet ISON will eventually reach an astonishing 845,000mph on ...
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### Compute Planet's Apparent Visual Magnitude

In a hypothetical solar system there exist: a sun of radius $r_s$ and absolute visual magnitude $V$ the Earth, with radius $r_e$ and distance from the sun of $1\,AU$ another planet, wit radius ...
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### Hour angle sunrise calculation problem

I am trying to program a sunrise/sunset calculator using this formula tutorial. If you follow the steps, eventually you get to this formula for "H" (the "hour angle"): \$H = \arccos( [\sin(-0.83) - ...
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### What is the difference between a dwarf spheroidal galaxy and a globular cluster?

This Wikipedia article states that Segue 1 is either a dwarf spheroidal galaxy or globular cluster associated with our own Milky Way. I am wondering what the difference is between dwarf spheroidal ...
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### Does mass create space?

Imagine two cubes each with the side 1 light year. One of the cubes is empty of any matter. The other cube contains a massive star. Does the cube which contains the massive star have a larger volume ...
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### what is the farthest object we've been able to bounce signals off of to date?

I know people bounced lasers off of Venus and Mercury in 1960s in order to test the Shapiro delay. Since then, we've developed higher-power lasers and radio transmitters (Bolshakovo transmitter). ...
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### How many new galaxies enter the observable universe each day/year/decade?

Each day light has more time to reach our eyes from distant galaxies. In one day, light travels 2.59×10^10 km. So our observable universe (assuming my simple math skills apply here and there isn't ...
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### Calculate telescope orientation based on RA, DEC and Lat/Long

I'm parsing FITS files for a project based on data from a telescope. These files include 'DEC', 'RA' and lat long values. I understand roughly the concept of celestial coordinates and I assume that ...
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### Maximum Amplitude of a Lissajous Orbiting Object in a L4 or L5 Position

I stumbled on The Lagrangian points during some wikipedia reading. After looking at the gravity contours, I naturally come to the conclusion that the L4 & L5 should have a wave pattern and then ...
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### Are there standard algorithms and procedures for creating unique sky maps based on latitude/longitude/date/time?

I am trying to build an astronomy app that will use the user's latitude and longitude, along with the current date and time, to create a 3D view of the celestial sphere as seen based on that data. ...
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### “How the Universe Works”: is it scientifically accurate? [closed]

The documentary/mini-series How the Universe Works is based on scientific evidence and according to what is known nowadays, or sheer bunk? Throughout the series, are there any particular topics which ...
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### Exoplanet naming conventions

I'm looking for any exoplanet nomenclature, official, semi-official, proposed, or just a good idea, beyond what can already be found on Wikipedia at ...
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### Why can primordial tensor perturbations of the CMB be ascribed to gravitational waves?

Why can primordial tensor perturbations of the CMB be ascribed to gravitational waves? Is this attribution unique, or are there other michanisms that could lead to the ecitation of tensor modes? In ...
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### need data-point: actual counts per second with APD (avalanche photodiode) detector

I'm designing a sensor system to perform specialized [astronomy and space-sciences] experiments, and need a "reality check" to support or adjust my theoretical calculations. What I need is the ...
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### Black dwarf binary systems

I know black dwarf stars do not exist yet, and that they are what white dwarfs end up after a long time. The question is really simple: would it be possible to have a binary system in which one of the ...
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### Radioactive decay is the main source of the earth's interior heat: fact or theory? [closed]

It's believed the main reason that the interior of the Earth hasn't cooled down in 4 billion years is because of the ongoing decay of radioactive elements that keeps adding more heat than is lost to ...
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### Is light bending around my finger? [closed]

I was hoping that astronomy enthusiasts/scientists would help me out with a simple question about light. Hold your outstretched hand up to any bright light source (the sun, or even a light bulb) so ...
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### Can we only see the past of the universe? [duplicate]

So I was reading some interesting stuff about universe and Big Bang and wanted to make sure one thing. As far as I understand everything we can see about universe is the past, right? I mean all the ...