All Questions

186 views

“Up” and “down” in Space [closed]

From my understanding, "up" and "down" in space is going towards (down) an object's gravitational pull or (up) which is going away from it. I get confused with this explanation, and I believe simply ...
61 views

Standardized “constellation” regions?

The current system of constellations is historical and has kind of arbitrary boundaries. This has a number of obvious downsides: Difficult to define boundaries need complex tables to express Each ...
25 views

What is a typical value for core-to-star efficiency?

I was reading Unfolding the Laws of Star Formation: The Density Distribution of Molecular Clouds by Kainulainen et al., which discusses star formation rates and efficiencies. One variable used is ...
120 views

What supernova has created the iron currently found in Earth core?

Iron is generated by stars in a certain part of their life cycle. Earth contains a lot of iron inside, however it is clear that this iron could have not been generated in a star in close proximity. If ...
261 views

What happens to galaxies when they die?

Stars explode when they die and blast heavy elements into space. Do galaxies do the same thing?
210 views

How are rogue planets discovered?

Planets are usually found by observing a star and waiting for the light level to drop when a planet passes in front of it, but what about rogue planets that don't have host stars?
109 views

Finding Latitude and Longitude of a person or of where a picture was taken

this is my first post on the Astronomy stack exchange site. Please let me know how this question is based on y'all's generally accepted criteria for a good question as well as possible improvements. ...
24 views

Occurence of Venusian transits

As transits of Venus come in pairs each seperated by 8 years, wouldn't that imply an accurate ratio between earths and Venus' revolution period? I've found the ratio to be about 0.681. I presume one ...
83 views

Evidence that galaxies are made of billions of stars?

What is the evidence that galaxies are made of billions of stars? Even faint galaxies? Can spectral analysis distinguish galaxies from individual stars?
2k views

Does the Moon's magnetic field affect Earth's magnetic field?

I wanted to ask a question; it's simple but I cannot find any possible and perfect solution. Earth has poles, North and South. By which we can get directions using a compass or a needle compass, but ...
23 views

If conjuncting planets are 1/3° apart (geocentric) at 15° elongation how low could the elongation at closest approach be?

Does anyone even have a rough idea? I don't know which pairs of planets can appear close for longer without changing elongation too slow like Mars does when behind the Sun.
126 views

Has the sun become way brighter the last years?

Up to last year, I never got blinded by the sun in everyday situations (e.g. running towards it), at no time of the year I was. But since last christmas, it occured to me more often that I cannot ...
149 views

Which is really larger, Big Dipper or Small Dipper, in 3D

If we take the convex hull of the 3D coordinates of the stars in Ursa Major and Ursa Minor: which hull has larger volume? This is meant semi-humorous but we might also learn some interesting points ...
44 views

What happens to the Gas Pressure when working out the Eddington Luminosity?

I am looking at how the Eddington Luminosity is derived and I do no understand why we only care about $P_{rad}$? When working out $L_{Edd}$ you take the ratio between $dP_{rad}/dr$ and ...
1k views

Which is more rare: Lunar eclipse or Solar eclipse?

Which is more rare: Lunar eclipse or Solar eclipse? Please explain why either one is more rare than the other. Thank you in advance for your inputs.
125 views

Stars in the sky

Are the stars we can see with the naked eye in the night sky only from our Milky Way galaxy or can we see stars from Andromeda? I am aware we can see other celestial objects like nebulas and the ...
2k views

How was the Earth-Sun distance originally calculated?

AFAIK it was possible long before the first interplanetary probes. Who did it?
277 views

Why can we see stars but not astronaut on the moon

A question came up today in astronomy class and it got me wondering all night. How is it that if stars are so far away, we can see them so clearly but we cannot see astronauts on the moon.
148 views

Is there a way to tell what the surface of a planet is like?

Kepler-442b I'm doing a project in which I need to find a planet within our galaxy that might be habitable. I found this planet that is within its stellar system's habitable zone, and due to research ...
81 views

Calculating the age of the universe

Is the calculated age of the universe that of the visible universe or the entire universe? I dont know how the age is calculated but if it is believed that all we see visibly IS the entire universe ...
490 views

How can the sun burn without oxygen?

Allright I am a 17 year old student, that only just figured out that the universe is amazing! Thanks to Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson I raised a lot of interest in the universe. Due to his latest show ...
1k views

What would happen if Jupiter and Earth were at the same distance as the Moon is from Earth?

If Spock came with a super machine capable of moving planets, and placed Earth so close to Jupiter as the Earth's moon, the gravity of Jupiter would make us fall into it?
110 views

Evolution of the Hubble parameter

In the lambda-CDM model describing an accelerating Universe, the Hubble parameter is currently decreasing with time. Will it continue to decrease forever?
5k views

Why there is no smoke around the Sun?

Where there is fire, there is always smoke. So why there isn't any smoke near the Sun?
181 views

Claim that 30-m class telescopes will have resolution far superior to Hubble: true?

This article makes the claim that the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT, number 4 in the list) will have resolution 10 times better than that of Hubble, while the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT, number 3 in ...
67 views

Cosmological deflation?

Wikipedia tells us: In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation is the exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted ...
64 views

Can you assume atmosphere height for the purpose of surface pressure calculation?

Given that by definition of scale height an atmosphere thins by a factor of 1/e^x where x is elevation in terms of scale height multiples (See the table here: Definition of Scale Height), can we ...
369 views

Where is Voyager 1 (or 2) going? In which direction?

Knowing it has exited the solar system, is it traveling in the direction of the center of the galaxy, away from it, orbiting it, or maybe even going perpendicular from the disk-shaped galaxy?
84 views

Missing Terms in Weinberg's treatment of perturbations on Newtonian Cosmology

I was reading Appendix F of Steven Weingberg's book "Cosmology". In this Appendix he works out the perturbations to a cosmological fluid described by non-relativistic hydrodynamics and Newtonian ...
487 views

How to plot orbit of binary star and calculate its orbital elements?

I have a set of dates, position angles ($\theta$) and angular separations ($\rho$) for visual binary star. For example: ...
138 views

How far apart is the dust in the Sombrero Galaxy's dust lane?

In his answer to this question, TildalWave made this remark: I think that first, we have to properly appreciate the size of the Sombrero Galaxy. It is roughly 50,000 light years (15 kilo parsecs) ...
35 views

How to implement DCDFT to get S vs T graph

I was trying to implement DCDFT (Date Compensated DFT) (Ferraz Mello's) to a tabular data which I had saved in an Excel file. After searching the internet thoroughly, I came across Vstar software, ...
179 views

what is a Friedmann model?

Can you explain what is a Friedmann model to a layman? And also give some examples of Friedmann models, specially I would like to know if the lambda-CDM model is considered a Friedmann model.
2k views

Why do some planets have rings?

Some planets, specifically Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in our solar system, have planetary rings. Why do some planets have rings? How are they made and from what? Most importantly, will I ...
29 views

Tonight sky - deep sky objects

programmatically how can i get the list of Deep sky objects that will transit the meridian in my Latitude and longitude? Any online API?
218 views

Determine the moons of Jupiter through a telescope

I was doing my own "space exploration" last night with a telescope. Being a space noob I can't visually determine stars or planets (I know the moon, though), but I focused on one particularly bright ...
170 views

On a log-log plot of surface gravity to planet mass, what is the meaning of the y-intercept?

I am playing around with data from exoplanets.org, and am interested in the plot of surface gravity to planet mass. I reproduced this plot after downloading their data and performed a non-linear ...
115 views

What percent of planets are in the position that they could be viewed edge-on from Earth? (and thus able to undergo transits)

Star number 12644769 from the Kepler Input Catalog was identified as an eclipsing binary with a 41-day period, from the detection of its mutual eclipses (9). Eclipses occur because the orbital ...
290 views

How would we detect an Earth doppelganger planet?

With our current technology, or technology available in the near future (up to 2025), how would we detect a planet exactly like our own, and how close would it have to be to be detectable? Which ...
53 views

Can close binaries have a very eccentric orbit?

For example, are there binaries with an orbital period < 5 day and that are very eccentric? What kind of factors could slow down orbital circularisation? Are ...
72 views

What is the most populated/numerous stellar system in which the orbits of all objects are known?

I posed a question or two on here a couple months or so ago about the orbital patterns of each of the seven stars in the two septenary star systems Nu Scorpii and AR Cassiopeiae. They remain ...
251 views

Why does the Solar System have no (natural) satellites of satellites?

What are the conditions for a planetary moon to have a satellite of its own? How far do the Solar System's bodies fall from the necessary threshold?
70 views

What are the equations for an orbit with time as parameter?

I am preparing a talk on the Equation of Time, and I want to produce an animation of the movement of the earth around the sun, in an exaggerated ellipse, to illustrate the speeding up and slowing down ...
59 views

What is the largest object on which the Yarkovsky effect has been observed?

The Yarkovsky effect is responsible for changes in the rotation and orbit of some celestial bodies, most notably asteroids. It has been measured on asteroids, such as 6489 Golevka and 1999 RQ36. What ...
119 views

Free source of printable star charts in the format of the Millennium Star Atlas?

I've been looking for sources of printable electronic star charts - there seem to be many different ones available, either as part of planetarium software or just plain charting packages. But there's ...
238 views

Nebula and galaxies using 70mm scope

Telescope: Orion 09843 SpaceProbe 3,3 inch aperture(76mm), 700mm focal length, eyepieces - 25mm and 10mm focal lengths. Please tell me whether it is possible to see nebula and galaxies.
65 views

Would dark energy save the earth for a while as the sun heats up?

Would the expansion of space (e.g. dark energy) move the earth further away from the sun over time, possibly saving us for perhaps a few billion years as the sun heats up? Scientists now tend to ...
93 views

How can a supernova affect black hole in a binary system?

Suppose in a binary stars system there is a dying star and a companion black hole as they orbit around each other. My question is what will possibly happen to the black hole if the partner goes ...