All Questions

4answers
104 views

Moon's orbit around the Sun

The Earth revolves around the Sun and the Moon revolves around the Earth. Out of curiosity I started thinking about the orbit of the Moon around the Sun and expected (assumed) it to be as follows: ...
1answer
46 views

Is the Universe really expanding at an increasing rate?

Here's what I just read from Wikipedia's page on the Hubble Space Telescope: While Hubble helped to refine estimates of the age of the universe, it also cast doubt on theories about its future. ...
1answer
34 views

Is the Dwarf Planet class really necessary?

Another way of asking this is, what is the difference between dwarf planets and asteroids? Aren't they the same things? It's just that some asteroids are spherical and others aren't...or is there ...
0answers
38 views

Is it accurate to compare comets to clouds and rain?

I'm trying to avoid an opinion-based question, so before I outline the comparison I'm proposing, I will qualify the specific facts that yield this comparison. By focusing answers on the relative ...
1answer
32 views

Trouble understanding speed-dispersion in (elliptical) galaxies

I'm learning about LOSVDs (Line Of Sight Velocity Distributions) and I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the used terms. As I understand, the LOSVD of a given (elliptical) galaxy is the density ...
2answers
100 views

What would be the practical consequences (on earth) if the Moon was not tidally locked?

I was thinking about the fact that all the largest Solar System moons are tidally locked to its primary and this question arose.
2answers
64 views

Is the angular resolution of a telescope irrespective of used eye-piece?

Suppose a telescope has aperture $D = 20$ cm. The angular resolution of such telescope, according to the Rayleigh criterion (if I have understood it correctly), is given by \theta = ...
1answer
63 views

I'm having trouble achieving sharp telescope focus

I've been having trouble getting really sharp focus on my telescope. Using Saturn as a reference, with a 20mm eye piece it is very sharp. But when I go to 10mm or 6mm, it gets bigger and blurrier. I ...
0answers
11 views

The physical nature of Quantum Entanglement: Two Electrons linked? Or one Electron in two places at once? [migrated]

Graduate in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, currently studying various fields of science in order to establish a base knowledge for cross-field lab interactivity for future projects; so ...
1answer
74 views

Isn't the date of the Big Bang a bit bogus?

If I understand correctly, the date of the Big Bang is an extrapolation of acceleration of the universe's expansion through time based on the erroneous assumption that the universe is approximately 13 ...
1answer
25 views

Do Noctilucent clouds cause problems with telescopes?

Noctilucent clouds are at around 85km altitude and are formed of ice crystals. The ISS recently posted a number of photographs of these clouds and pointed out the key feature, which is the bright blue ...
1answer
32 views

Photometer vs. CCD-camera

The Wikipedia article on photometry says that These have largely been replaced with CCD cameras that can simultaneously image multiple objects, although photoelectric photometers are still used ...
0answers
16 views

Calculating effective SSN (sunspot number)

I am doing research on SSN like parameters. As I can see effective SSN is a parameter that derived from SSN or may be using other parameters. Do anyone know how to calculate effective SSN. i.e ...
0answers
33 views

How to calculate geocentric conjunction time and moon altitude at a given time

Umm al-Qura calendar of Saudi Arabia determine the new moon if these criteria meet at 29th day: The geocentric conjunction occurs before sunset. The moon sets after the sun. I've got the formula ...
3answers
187 views

Why doesn't the sun pull the moon away from earth?

If the suns gravitational pull is strong enough to hold much larger masses in place (all the planets) and at much greater distances (all planets further away from the sun then earth) why does it not ...
1answer
47 views

Are there naturally radiation shielded areas on Mars? (shadowed by terrain formations)

Mars' thin atmosphere and lack of magnetosphere exposes its surface to lots of Solar UV radiation and cosmic radiation. But Mars also has some dramatic altitude gradients in for example Valles ...
1answer
96 views

Why was this asteroid (4864 Nimoy) chosen to be named after Leonard Nimoy?

The asteroid 4864 Nimoy was recently named after Leonard Nimoy. It was discovered on September 2, 1988 so it went nearly 27 years without a name. Why was this asteroid chosen to be named after him? ...
0answers
59 views

Will Hubble's law always be accurate?

We have Hubble's law: v=Hd where H is the Hubble parameter, which is decreasing in value, but it will be constant in the distant future. So, assumming the Standard Model of Cosmology holds true, ...
1answer
61 views

Is there a mechanism that makes small moons more rounded than comets?

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has a highly irregular dumbbell shape. But the sample of comet shapes observed is very small, so I wonder if irregular shape is the norm for comets and for small moons. Many ...
1answer
42 views

How did WASP-18b exoplanet form?

I am new to this community and not quite sure if this is an appropriate question to be asked here. Anyways its just my curiosity. As far as I could know about WASP-18b is that, it orbits very close to ...
1answer
32 views

radial velocity fitting of a binary

I have two series of velocities (HJD, $v_{1}$ and $v_{2}$ ), how to fit in detail? There is any formula on the web? $sine$ curve is easy, but I need to consider an eccentric orbit. Suppose we can ...
0answers
14 views

Halpha velocity fields of spirals falling into a cluster

What kind of impact would you expect ram pressure stripping / tidal interactions / harassment / interactions with the cluster potential (etc!) to have on the h-alpha velocity fields of infalling ...
1answer
89 views

Day Length on Double Planets

Assume two similarly sized bodies tide-locked to one another orbiting a barycenter between the two. That barycenter orbits a star. Since the two are tide-locked, their sidereal rotational period and ...
1answer
54 views

How can we tell how many exoplanets a star has?

Part of this answer (discussing the moving center of mass of our solar system) explains that this movement is one way we know a star has planets: Bonus: We use this phenomenon to find planets ...
2answers
179 views

Is our universe included inside a black hole?

This question repetitively comes to my mind but I've never found any good scientist article to argue about it, only esoteric or speculative web articles without much valuable background. So let's ...
1answer
23 views

Question about extreme space distortion and creation of a new dimension

In all the illustrations regarding space distortion, I find an extra dimension that depicts space distortion. Is there any mathematical equation that proves the creation of an extra dimension ? ...
1answer
48 views

Why is dark energy preferred to the cosmological constant?

Dark energy and the cosmological constant are often identified, but Peebles and Ratra explain that "Einstein did not consider the cosmological constant to be part of the stress-energy term... a ...
1answer
55 views

How close are we to be able to detect and measure gravitational lensing inside the milky way?

Gravitational lensing takes advantage of statistically uniform distributions of background objects in order to infer a credible map of dark matter concentrations that isn't too noisy. If there are too ...
0answers
19 views

What more could be learned from a rare astronomical event if we knew precisely when it would occur?

This is actually related to a question I recently asked on Worldbuilding, but seemed more appropriately asked here. To keep this from being too broad in scope, let's assume that someone figured out ...
1answer
43 views

Calculate time when star is above altitude 30°

To find the best observation time for an object, I'd like to calculate the time when it is 30° or more above the horizon. Local Sideral Time would be sufficient. To include that in my program, I need ...
0answers
35 views

How did Meeus calculate equinox and solstice dates?

In Astronomical Algorithms (2nd ed, ch. 27, 2009 corrected printing) Jean Meeus gives expressions to calculate the date and time (dynamical time, equivalent to Terrestrial Time) of equinoxes and ...
3answers
188 views

What's in the center of a Galaxy?

Ok, so it's supposed that there is a black hole in the center of any galaxy, that makes my head explode because: There is light in the center of the galaxy, but it is supposed that black holes, also ...
1answer
75 views

Is Mercury's core liquid?

A very basic question, but one to which I keep finding different answers: does Mercury have a liquid core, or is it all solid? Whatever the reason, what are the causes of it being so?
3answers
57 views

Is there a difference between the terms 'elliptical' and 'elongated' for galaxies?

While studying the Solar System, I found that some galaxies are either elliptical or elongated. What's the difference?
2answers
146 views

Interstellar movie: What is the “portal” to the other galaxy?

I recently watched Interstellar with some friends and we didn't come to the same conclusion. In my opinion, the portal they use to go to the other galaxy (to visit the three planets) is not a black ...
2answers
95 views

why does not Australia/Russia have optical telescopes?

Their areas are large. However I only find a 2.3msliding telescope in Australia. As far as I know, there are lots of mountains in Australia and Russia. They may have different reasons because of ...
1answer
51 views

Eternally collapsing objects?

As has been pointed out by some scientists, that black holes aren't stable bodies but are eternally collapsing objects. How does one come to such a conclusion? Is hawking radiation related to this in ...
2answers
60 views

Is mass+energy conserved when a new universe forms inside a black hole?

My understanding is that there are credible theories out there in which the formation of a singularity in a black hole also represents the beginning of a new universe via a big bang. We can't see the ...
2answers
103 views

What kind of things I could “see” with an amateur radio telescope?

There are apparently not many reasonably priced radio telescopes available for the amateur users. I only could find this one, which costs ~10 k€. Reading the page, I don't get a good overview what ...
1answer
42 views

Collapse of a star below the mass of Chandrashekhar Limit

How is Chandrashekhar Limit calculated? What happens to stars below the mass of the Chandrashekhar limit after they collapse?
0answers
21 views

Focusing light through plastic cable to extend telescope viewer

This question will seem out of place here, my explanation is that I want to build a system to view my telescope without being uncomfortable, as of now I have to stand up and bend over to view the eye ...
1answer
232 views

How Much Overlap Will the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way Have When They Collide?

Measurements of Andromeda's blue shift let us conclude that the distance between the Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way is decreasing and in a few billion years they will "collide". The blue shift ...
2answers
24 views

How is the cost of JWST distributed on different parts of development and operations?

The James Webb Space Telescope costs nearly 9 billion dollar. What parts of this project cost how much? I suppose that almost every component has to be developed and is not available to buy off the ...
1answer
61 views

Am I using my Celestron 8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope correctly?

I became interested in astronomy a few years ago and started with a Celestron AstroMaster 70AZ refractor telescope. That seemed nice, and I wanted to upgrade to a go-to telescope that was also more ...
1answer
71 views

How well do planetary orbits fit with Johannes Kepler's in- & circumscribed Platonic solids?

In Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596) Johannes Kepler proposed that the relative distances between the orbits of the six ancient planets (six because heliocentrism had recently added Earth as one of the ...
1answer
80 views

Capturing Ceres

Would it be possible to slightly change the trajectory of Ceres to make it end up orbiting the Earth without messing up the Solar System? How much energy would be required and how long would the ...
0answers
59 views

Can there be an object with planetary discriminant between Ceres and Neptune?

The planetary discriminant is a measure of how dominant a body is within its region of the solar system. For (true) planets, it is >10000 and for dwarf planets it is <1. See this answer for more ...
0answers
14 views

Do the planetary ring lasts? [duplicate]

Almost all gas giants in our solar system are observed to have a planetary ring comprises of ice, dust and rocks. My question is do these rings obediently sticks around their foster parent until our ...
0answers
11 views

Why don't all space junks burn up? [migrated]

Man-made satellites have to use boosters to accelerate to maintain orbit around the Earth, space debris and old satellites with depleted booster should be pulled by either Earth's gravity or slowed by ...
0answers
16 views

What are the analysis steps in taking raw data from Kepler to a planetary system determination

I wish to get a concise list of the analysis steps required to take raw light data from a Kepler data set of a star through the steps needed to get to an analytical determination of the existence of a ...

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