All Questions

166 views

Why does iron consume more energy in the fusion process than it produces?

I understand that once a star starts fusing iron, it's doomed to collapse because iron fusion requires more energy than it releases in the process, allowing the opposing gravity of the star to cause ...
49 views

How certain are we about the universe's flatness?

The universe is thought to be flat: $\Omega = 1 \pm 1\%$. As I understand it we can determine this by measuring triangles against the CMB. Yet during inflation dark energy made the universe grew ...
69 views

Which kind of properties can we get for cosmic ray particles hitting on an optical ccd?

It is very common that we meet cosmic ray particles in optical images recorded by CCDs. You can see the "snowflakes" in the hubble images below: Generally we should remove them in order to get ...
87 views

How massive can a star be at birth? [duplicate]

We have discovered some incredibly massive stars. R136a1, the most massive known star is estimated to have 265 times mass as our Sun. Yet it has been burning for at least a million years, and must ...
51 views

Is there an astronomy exam I can take?

I am currently living in Bangkok and I love astronomy. However, I haven't been able to find an official astronomy exam that I can do to gain college credit. Could someone help me out please?
53 views

Long term effect on rocks of high pressure and temperature?

The mean surface temperature of Venus is about 460 C and the pressure is about 92 atmospheres. Assuming this situation (or similar) has prevailed for millions of years what changes (if any) would ...
108 views

Why are explosions always used to represent the Big Bang?

In documentaries the Big Bang is often represented as blackness followed by a big explosion with loud noises. This always feels cheap and falling short of explaining the origin of the Universe. Is ...
111 views

What is the galaxy M87 doing these days?

The massive elliptical galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster is 53,490,000 light years away. It also contains one of the largest, heaviest supermassive black holes in the known Universe. But it's also my ...
163 views

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 ...
103 views

Sun from SuperNova

I have read that our sun was created from older star(s) which had exploded in a supernova. If all the matter is travelling away from the central point of explosion, how does it coalesce back into a ...
127 views

How to use a telescope to find a specific celestial body?

I am a beginner interested in astronomy. I bought a Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ telescope. It's a Newtonian Reflector and it's not computerised. I did manage to see the Moon in some magnifications but ...
219 views

Stellar mass of galaxies

Given the magnitudes (in the i-band) of certain galaxies, I would like to calculate their stellar mass (in terms of solar masses). So far, I have calculated their absolute magnitudes and gotten to ...
151 views

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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Movement of the satellites of the planets . . .

Is the movement of the satellites (moons) of a planet coplanar, like the planets being coplanar around the local Sun?
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Is there online data on asteroid axial tilts?

I am hoping to find axial tilts for asteroids and also their spring and fall equinox. Some of the asteroids I'm interested in are: 4 Vesta, 1 Ceres, 24 Themis, 65 Cybele, 153 Hilda, 624 Hektor
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Do planetary surface temperatures change in unison in a solar system?

Are there any known correlations between the changes in planetary surface temperatures in a solar system? If so, do the farthest planets have smaller albeit correlated changes?
135 views

What's the origin and culture of funny astronomical terminology?

I'm not in the industry myself, but as an interested member of the public the terminology of astronomy seems a bit funny. Astronomers who today talk publicly about the interstellar medium say that the ...
86 views

How to estimate age of asteroid family Erigon

I have one problem: On picture below we can see Erigone family asteroids in plane semimajor axis - absolute magnitude. Based on V-type as a consequence of Yarkovsky effect, estimate age of this ...
65 views

Rotation and relativity

When a planet is spinning around its own axis, it has an effect on the trajectory of its satellites. I believe it is called frame dragging. Spin increases the kinetic energy of an object, ...
21 views

Is the Astronomy community still concerned about the lumpyness of matter distribution in the universe?

A decade or so ago, when I was still a science undergrad, one of the open questions in astrophysics was to explain the uneven distribution of galaxies in the observable universe. That is, why did the ...
82 views

How did the moon's orbit become eccentric?

The Moon's orbit is more eccentric, 0.0549, than most planets. I can understand that planets get eccentric by disturbing each other like under the late heavy bombardment. And likewise for multiple ...
120 views

How can we be 13.2 billion light years from another galaxy?

How did we get 13.2 billion light years from the faraway galaxies being discovered with Hubble? If we all started near each other at the Big Bang, and we all travelled slower than the speed of light, ...
71 views

Why Earthian atmosphere is so thin?

Venus is somewhat lighter then Earth, yet has a much thicker atmosphere. One would imagine that the following should be true: During the formation phase, all inner planets had captured as much gas ...
22 views

How thick can planetary rings be?

This arose from a comment on Worldbuilding. We have data from four planets in the Solar System with rings, which doesn't make for a very good sample size. Observations of exoplanets could change ...
157 views

Why are there no stars on New Horizons images of Pluto

I followed the New Horizons Mission a little, and saw among others this image of Pluto: I wonder, why you can't see any stars on it. As far as my very basic knowledge in astronomy goes, I think you ...
107 views

Is expanding universe adding potential energy?

A system with two massive bodies has potential energy proportional to their separation. Since the universe is expanding, is the potential (and total?) energy of such a system slowly increasing? What ...
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Regarding solar system dynamics, i.e. planets in stellar systems and moons in planetary systems, this is often mentioned in the literature, but it is difficult to find a good analysis/explanation of ...
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Are trojans in L5 more likely than in L4?

Mars has much more trojans in L5. Does it reflect a common pattern?
136 views

Image sets for testing stacking algorithms?

I am looking for sets of astronomical images for testing different kinds of stacking algorithms. The idea is simple: if one has $N$ images of the same object, the signal-to-noise ratio of the ...
77 views

How Does Black Hole Evaporation Look From the Inside?

Imagine you're inside a black hole event horizon. The curvature of spacetime is such that the direction towards the singularity becomes timelike, as reverse movement becomes literally impossible. How ...
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How can you determine the initial volume of a planet's atmosphere?

Since the surface pressure of a planet is determined by the mass of the column of gasses above it one would surmise that to determine the pressure you must know the volume and mass of the atmosphere. ...
87 views

Total solar eclipse, supermoon, and spring equinox all happening at the same time: anything special about this?

Today (March 20, 2015) is seeing a rare combination of the spring equinox, a total solar eclipse, and a supermoon. I am wondering if there is anything special astronomically about all three of these ...
147 views

Sky view from Stellarium software vs. Sky view with naked eye

I'm slowly starting to interest in astronomy. Currently I'm enjoying in stargazing but unfortunately place where I live is very light polluted. I'm planing my vacation in a couple of months and one ...
21 views

Estimates for how many Trans-Neptunian Objects there are [duplicate]

The Minor Planet Center shows that we know of about 1350 Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO's). I think it is safe to assume that we have not found all the TNO's there are to find, even the ones that we ...
81 views

Is there a cosmic, rather than technological, upper limit to what a telescope can resolve?

Space radio interferometers could have a baseline of millions of kilometers, but is there a point where a larger baseline doesn't improve the resolution anymore because the photons observed are ...
90 views

Questions about a fictional binary system, and habitability

Note: Questions are at the bottom. The rest had simply been written in a format to better organize my thoughts. The formulas used to construct this fictional solar system, had been borrowed from ...
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What is the cause of the variation from high and low mean obliquity periods of Mars?

It is reasonably well known that Mars has a greater obliquity range than Earth, due to Mars lacking a stabilising influence of a large moon. However, the Martian obliquity seems to have gone through ...
120 views

What range of exit pupils work for observing the full moon?

I'm observing the full moon, from a major city, with heavy light pollution and dust. The objective size is fixed, for this comparison, something between 4 and 6 inches. The question is about the ...
147 views

What are the azimuths of the planets' orbits?

I am creating a virtual solar system model and I want it to be as realistic as possible (e.g. orbits are ellipses, not circles, and orbits are oriented correctly, not all coplanar). In order for me ...
172 views

What would happen if a Black Hole and White Hole Collided?

Given our understanding of both black holes and white holes, what would be the outcome if they were both to suddenly collide? Black Holes: A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity ...
67 views

How to determine scalar-to-tensor ratio r from CMB polarization spectrum?

CMB polarization spectrum can tell us about the primordial scalar and tensor perturbation. By analyze B and E mode angular spectrum power spectrum and temperature power spectrum we can determine the ...
57 views

Mapping selenographic coordinates onto a sphere

I have a 3D rendering of the moon, which is represented as a sphere with a radius of N pixels. I also have selenographic coordinates. For example, the coordinates of the Apollo 11 landing site are ...
26 views

Does the radius of the Universe correspond to its total entropy?

I heard a claim that due to holographic principle, the surface area of the cosmic horizon corresponds to the universe's total entropy. As such the initial state had zero surface area and later ...
22 views

When do Mercury/Venus reach greatest elevation at sunset/twilight for a given location?

On what day does Mercury reach its greatest elevation (in degrees from the horizon) at sunset a given location? The obvious answer is the day of Mercury's greatest elongation from the Sun, but, ...
113 views

Is there a general term for epicycles, deferents, and eccentrics in Ptolemaic astronomy?

According to Ptolemy's (c. 150 CE) account of the motions of planets, planets moved in circular paths ("epicycles") around center points that in turn moved around the center of the earth along a path ...
52 views

What are the biggest problems about the numerical, finite-element GR models?

As I know, for example the modelling of the collapse of a neutron star (to a black hole) wasn't done correctly until now. Why? Yes, I know, the Einstein Field Equations aren't really easy to solve. ...
241 views

Milky way: How do we know its appearance? [duplicate]

How can we know how does the Milky Way look like if we are in it? Sorry if the answer is evident, I am not an expert.
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What is that void that the universe is growing into? [duplicate]

We understand that this is the universe and it is essentially full of space and time, but what is on the outside of the universe, and isn't that nothing, something, and how far does that reach. I.e. ...