# All Questions

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### What is the optimal escape trajectory from near a black hole?

Consider a space ship that is being drawn closer to a black hole. The crew begins to notice the effects, and discovers that they are nearing the black hole. They then manage to halt their ...
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### Does Tobler's First Law of Geography Apply to Star Composition?

There is a principle in Geography called Tobler's First Law of Geography which states that "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Does this ...
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### Calculating Angular Distance

Given the horizontal coordinates of two objects in the sky, how does one go about calculating the angular separation between them?
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### Is there a fundamental difference between a small galaxy, and a large star cluster?

For instance, If a large globular cluster were somehow ejected from its galaxy, and was observed by astronomers, would they call it a galaxy, or would there be characteristics of the star cluster that ...
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### Why does time get slow near a black hole? [closed]

Why exactly does time get slow around a black hole? And does it provide a way to go into the future?
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### Location on (or in) the celestial sphere

First off, I apologize if I am breaking any site-etiquitte. Secondly, this is probably extremely elementary. For a lab, I was given the question: When we are sitting in a planetarium, where are ...
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### Acronyms of catalogs in SIMBAD database

How to find acronym of specific catalog in SIMBAD database? For example, I want to select stellar names, object types and all binary stars from "Stellar effective magnetic fields. II." catalog ...
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### Calculate latitude and longitude based on date and sun

I can't seem to find this algorithm, if it exists. Can you calculate the longitude and latitude of where you are standing based on the date and the angle of the sun? Also, would the algorithm work for ...
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### Pictures of large galaxies

The Andromeda Galaxy is tens of thousands of light years in diameter. That suggests that the most distant stars in the Andromeda galaxy is up to tens of thousands of years "behind" in their orbit ...
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### What does the term alien planet actually refer to?

This article left me wondering what do they mean by the term alien planet? Aren't all planets simply alien by default, or do they mean planets outside our solar system are alien? Do they mean there is ...
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### Solar Noon: meridian crossing time versus time of maximum elevation

According to the first paragraph of the Noon Wikipedia page, solar noon is the moment when the Sun crosses the meridian and is at its highest elevation in the sky. The wording there suggests that ...
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### What is the difference between solar wind and solar radiation?

Is there a difference between solar wind and solar radiation or are they just different ways of describing the same thing?
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### What are some night sky objects I could see with my Celestron UpClose 20x50 Porro Binocular?

I bought this binocular because I've read countless times that one should start with a pair of binoculars before diving into telescopes. I've seen details of the moon and I can notice Venus round ...
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### Very bright star in the east at northern hemisphere. What is it?

From some time now (few weeks as far as I can remember), there is a very bright star in the eastern sky. I first thought it was Venus, but according to this link, Venus is in the western sky and ...
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### What's the distribution curve for meteor sightings?

I know that meteor showers have a "peak" observation time. What does the distribution in time look like? Is one side of the peak steeper/shallower or longer/shorter than the other side, and if so, ...
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### How did water get on Earth

I recently read that water more then likely got here by comets (carrying water) hitting the Earth. However it also it says the impact of a comet hitting the Earth is much greater then an atomic bomb. ...
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### Why does radio astronomy offer higher resolution images than optical?

According to this lecture,"Radio astronomy has several advantages over optical astronomy...We can make the highest resolution images, and see things happening on the smallest scales." Why is this? If ...
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### How do moons get captured?

[Apologies if this is a duplicate: I feel it ought to be, but my searches have failed]. A moon-sized object is running loose in the Solar System, perhaps after a planetary collision. As it approaches ...
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### How should exoplanet discoveries affect SETI?

Given that SETI was created before the discovery of exoplanets, has this changed how they search? Would it make more sense to focus efforts on discovered earth like exoplanets?
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### What is the temperature of an accretion disc surrounding a supermassive black hole?

What is the temperature of an accretion disc surrounding a supermassive black hole? Is there plasma in the disc?
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### How is the diameter of a gas giant calculated?

As we know atmospheres of celestial bodies don't just stop at a given distance. They gradually become less dense as you move away from the center. I understand that the diameter of stars is ...
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### moonless night and lunar phase

How to define moonless night? There is no moon at all during some night? How to calculate and know whether the moon would appear during one night? If the lunar phase is full moon, is it possible ...
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### Is the dark energy between the moon and Earth measurable in any capacity?

What are the experiments, or measurements, that can detect, or account for, dark energy involved in making calculations concerning Earth and its only natural satellite?
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### Do black holes have energy?

So black holes are created by certain dying stars and when the star runs out of nuclear energy gravity wins out and the star implodes. An entire star’s mass collapses down into a smaller and smaller ...
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### Is it possible that a ultra-large portion of the space we live in is already inside a black hole? How could we refute this?

Trying to wrap my head around some concepts involving the very large gravitational fields of black holes, and what the gravitational gradients look like on a cosmic scale. I'm familiar with the Great ...
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### Time after sunset until star can be seen

Given a star's apparent location and apparent magnitude, how how many degrees below the horizon must the sun be for the star to be visible to the naked eye for an observer on Earth at a specified ...
98 views

### Cooling of stars

If all stars suddenly stopped producing heat (or heating up) which stars would cool to absolute zero first and how long would it take?
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### Build a high quality telescope from scratch [closed]

I am interested in building a high quality portable telescope from scratch in an attempt to better understand how telescopes work. What kind of materials do I need? How would I go about putting the ...
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### How can we predict a Big Crunch when all galaxies are moving further apart?

I've read that the further away a Galaxy is from us the faster it moves away. By this logic how can scientists predict that there will eventually be a big crunch when every piece of matter is ...
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### Why does e.g. Hubble's secondary mirror not block part of the picture?

The SOHO observatory has an opaque object in the light path that blocks the direct light from the sun making it possible to observe the corona. Hubble and many other telescopes have a big primary ...
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### What happens to the shrinking universe in the presence of the pressure of Hawking radiation?

Black holes release Hawking radiation. Now assume that the universe after all collapses back again, bringing all matter to a single black hole. I assume that this would bend the whole space-time of ...
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### Why one cannot escape from a black hole [duplicate]

The usual explanation is that escape velocity of a black hole is above speed of light, therefore nothing can escape because nothing can move faster than light. This is however a fallacy, because ...
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### What distance has the moon been from earth at the closest?

For every year, the moon is orbiting further away from earth. What distance has the moon been from earth at the closest?
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### Can I see the star of Bethlehem at Christmas? [closed]

In the Christian tradition the first Christians are believed to be three wise men who followed the star of Bethlehem to the stable where Jesus was supposed to be born. Is it with some accuracy known ...
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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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### Does our universe have to be embedded in a higher dimensional space?

I've heard that our universe may be open or closed. If it's closed it might have a toroid shape. If this is the case, would that imply that our 3 spatial dimensions have to be embedded in a higher ...
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### How long would it take for a rogue planet to evaporate in the late stages of the Universe?

I've read once a popular science book, in which the author calculated how long would it take for the most massive black holes to evaporate because of Hawking radiation. He claimed that after that time ...
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### Does the Perseid peak cause enough light pollution to be a problem?

The annual Perseid peak occurs between August 9-14. During this time, about one meteor burns up in the atmosphere per minute. When these meteorites burn up, they generate light. When you have one of ...
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### What proportion of planetary systems have been found with 'Hot Jupiters'

According to the NASA website "The strange attraction of Hot Jupiters", one of the main types of exoplanets that have been detected are Hot Jupiters, which are These are behemoth worlds that ...
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### Could an ejected “extra ice-giant” still be lurking in distant solar orbit?

BACKGROUND Hot Jupiters are thought to have migrated inwards, implying that another giant planet has been ejected in order to conserve the orbital momentum of those planetary systems. The number of ...
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### which pulsar has the longest spin period so far?

Vela X-1 has a 283s spin period, while this one may have a 2.7hr spin period. However neither of them is included in ATNF catalog. They are not included in $p-\dot{p}$ diagram either. The longest ...
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### How do you calculate length of day in a multiple-star system?

How can you calculate the length of day for a planet (given a particular latitude and longitude on that planet) orbiting multiple stars? What about a planet that is orbiting one star, but that star ...
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### Is there any way a planet could form independent of a star?

I just recently heard that there are currently no theoretical models that support planet formation without a star, but I can't remember where. So, I thought I would request all of your expertises. ...
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### Does rotation affect gravitational lines of force

I was reading about rotating pulsars and other more-massive objects spinning at absurd speeds (hundreds of revolutions per second), and there was one point of which I was not clear. Does a rotation ...
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### What are the cloud-like blobs in the Martian southern hemisphere?

In a very recent edition of New Scientist, an article Mystery cloud-like blobs over Mars baffle astronomers (16 Feb, 2015), detailed that on 12 March 2012, amateur astronomers around the world ...
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### Entropy of black hole

A line from one of the answers on a different question got me thinking: The simplest way to see this is probably that a black hole has a much higher entropy than a star or even another type of ...
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### Cancelling out earth rotation speed, Altazimuth mount

I have a Dobsonian telescope. It is using Altazimuth mount. Basic idea of using it is to target the object by moving telescope vertical axis perpendicular to the ground, and an elevation axis that ...
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### The role of gravity during planetesimal accretion

As far as I understand, during the formation of a planetary disc, grains of dust stick together due to collisions and chemical bonding. Considering the size of the grain - say, 1 mm - and the speed - ...