# All Questions

104 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 ...
29 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 ...
27 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 ...
198 views

### Where might a semi proficient amateur analyst participate in meaningful astronomical efforts

I am a retired engineer that has an ongoing interest in space efforts. In my youth I did work on the Apollo program but on propulsion and vehicle thermal control: not flight dynamics. I have ...
92 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?
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### 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.
308 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 ...
126 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. ...
182 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 ...
58 views

### Difference in redshift between 2 interacting galaxies

I have a galaxy 'A', say at redshift 1. Let's suppose this galaxy has no peculiar velocity. What would be the redshift of another galaxy 'B', that has a radial velocity of 500 km/s, relative to A? ...
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.
131 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 ...
353 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.
89 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 ...
435 views

### Mini black holes, a possible result of the LHC experiment at CERN

A scientist at CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider) was asked during an interview about the possible results and consequences of operating the LHC at full power of collision in the near future, one of the ...
48 views

### Two body transient solution

In the two body problem, if each body is given an initial condition as a momentum vector, what is the transient part of the solution as it settles into the steady state orbit?
218 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 ...
53 views

### Is it possible to get the distance to a star in the IPHAS DR2 catalog?

I'm looking at the IPHAS DR2 catalog. It has the Right Ascension and Declination but I'm not seeing any distance information (lightyears or parsecs). I'm wondering, given the columns in the dataset, ...
85 views

### What would this moving point of light be?

Tonight (10:00 PM EST Middlesex County, Mass.) when looking at the mostly clear sky I observed what I at first believed was a meteor. This point of light was moving east to northeast and that would be ...
44 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, ...
35 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?
245 views

### Why is the moon a fuzzy, white ball?

I currently own a telescope, I'm an amateur astronomer and currently just trying to view the moon. I own the Celestron PowerSeeker 70AZ. Link for information on the telescope: ...
74 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 ...
206 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 ...
308 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?
157 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 ...
155 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 ...
99 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 ...
117 views

### Star versus Black Hole

I'm making a simplified animation for college project on how a star reacts with a black hole. I had known that a black hole sucks in everything and thus should be doing the same for stars. But upon my ...
96 views

### Could our Sun be a companion star of a massive black hole?

Can we track its orbit well now? There is any study that may indicate our sun may be a companion of a big black hole? What is the current constrain about its orbit now? There is a 1000 solar mass ...
104 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 ...
549 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 ...
219 views

### Would a tablespoon of a neutron star remain intact?

I've heard people say that a tablespoon of neutron star would weigh over a billion tons. If we ever could take a tablespoon of one would it still remain intact with the same density?
139 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?
60 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 ...
118 views

### Space time and aging

Would a more significant curvature of spacetime relative to earth (i.e. time on jupiter) effect the aging process? Basically would you age at a slower rate? Or age faster on the moon?
92 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 ...
92 views

### How to orient ESO's Milky Way Panorama in a 3D model

I have been trying hard to find the star "Polaris" in the following image from ESO and Serge Brunier: From peering at other maps and simulation apps, I think it should be in the top-left quarter, ...
74 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 ...
192 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 ...
72 views

### What decided how the Kepler space telescope was pointed?

I suppose that the Kepler field was well chosen. It is rich in stars and has minimal background light since it is pointing out from the disc. But other things could have been considered. For example, ...
124 views

### How strong does a light source on the Moon have to be to be visible from Earth?

Flashes from some meteoroid impacts on the Moon can be seen with the naked eye. How much light must a future lunar base emit in order to be visible as a dot in the lunar night (like the flag of ...
159 views

### Is the North star going to stay in the North sky?

Considering how the our solar system, and how every other star in the galaxy is traveling through the cosmos, it seems like it's a miracle that the stars and constellations in the sky stay as constant ...
49 views

### Were magnetic monopoles created before, during or after inflation?

In the case that magnetic monopoles exist, when were they created? I thought that all particles were created after inflation, but I've read some comments recently that hint at a pre-inflationary ...
25 views

### X-ray flare questions

I search the reference papers about flare, but nobody said something about below clearly. Could anyone give some help? If a single X-ray decay without eclipse or other irrelevant factors is not able ...
139 views

### Can asteroids contain atmosphere?

Gas is abundance in the universe, can a massive asteroid draws in these gas forming a thin atmosphere?
284 views

### Would a human body float in the dense atmosphere of Venus?

To survive high in the atmosphere of Venus, all you would nead to wear is suit that protects you from the sulfuric acid vapors in the air and a supply of breathable air. Assuming (for simplicity) that ...
82 views

### Is there a theory / equation showing whether or not two passing bodies will go into orbit around each other?

I am looking for a theory that shows whether or not two passing celestial bodies will go into orbit. I assume there would have to be a critical point where the gravitational attraction is stronger ...