All Questions

151 views

What will the last days of Earth be like?

The sun is a main-sequence star; as I understand it the sun will expand into a red giant in a few billion years. I have heard conflicting reports of what this entails - some sources I found say the ...
447 views

Are stars NML Cygni, UY Scuti, VY Canis Majoris and VV Cephei near the ends of their lives?

Are the four stars mentioned in the title stars that are going to go supernova, or are they stars that are in mid-life, like our Sun, but just happen to be so much larger than our Sun?
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Could martian meteorites come from Olympus Mons?

Could Olympus Mons have thrown ejecta out of Mars' orbit when it was active? Does it fit with the composition and dating of meteorites with martian origin?
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How to tell a crater is old or not?

Based on Wikipedia, we can estimate the age of a planet's surface. How to tell a particular crater is newly formed or not? It may have sharp edge. Different astronomical objects may have different ...
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about H$_\alpha$ and H$_\beta$ lines in astronomical objects' spectra

Generally there may be some line ratio between the two lines. If H$\alpha$ is strong, it is quite possible we can see H$_\beta$ too. Is it possible we can see H$_\beta$, but can not see H$_\alpha$? ...
183 views

Where to get Polaris Right ascension value from

To calculate for example the polaris hour angle I use this formula to calculate polaris hour angle. τ = θ - α τ= hour angle θ= sideral time α= polaris RA (~ 2h32m) But where does the α=2h32m come ...
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Could the James Webb Space Telescope detect biosignals on exoplanets?

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which is slated to launch in 2018 will bring us a better view of exoplanets, but will it be sufficient to detect signs of life on at least some of those worlds? ...
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How to run MOOG on OS X Yosemite

By what process can a user running the latest version of OS X Yosemite execute MOOG with \$MOOG in bash? Due to the removal of 32bit libraries in OS X 10.7+, the ...
171 views

What is the axial tilt of a planet measured relative to?

I am very much a beginner on the astronomy front but I understand about planets having different axial tilts, hence why Venus turns the opposite direction from the Earth and Uranus turns sideways. ...
63 views

Why doesn't the Moonrise appear red when viewed from orbit?

After searching through many videos, I finally found one that shows, from the perspective of low earth orbit, the Moon transiting the horizon. It is actually a Moonset, but it shouldn't make a ...
87 views

Why was Pluto's resonance not discovered until 1965?

Over here, I was shocked to learn: The Neptune–Pluto system lies in a 3:2 orbital resonance. C.J. Cohen and E.C. Hubbard at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division discovered this in ...
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How clearly would I be able to see a galaxy with the naked eye if viewed from a “close” distance?

In images of other galaxies they look very bright and vivid against the blackness of space (example). If I was located a few tens of thousands of lightyears away from a galaxy, would I see something ...
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Do NEA (Near Earth Asteroids) have minable water ice?

Water is very useful for rocket fuel and life support in space. But does water, in abundance and form which conceivably could be usefully mined this century, really exist in NEA's? Or do we have to go ...
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Why didn't we have inflation when the theory of everything and GUTS broke symmetry? [closed]

Inflation seems to have occurred when the symmetry breaking of the electroweak occurred. But do we know of any reason why we did not have inflation when gravity separated from the other forces or ...
121 views

Stability of solar system

My question is simple: Is the Solar system stable? You can see this Wikipedia page. Edit: Sorry, because i think my question is more about mathematics and classical mechanics of planets in ...
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What is the air pressure in the heliosphere (Sun's atmosphere)?

Specifically, I am wondering what the pressure is at a distance of around 1 AU. Does it it decrease quadratically with distance?
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Does the Sun move? [duplicate]

I'm curious; does the Sun actually move? The concept behind the question is that if you wear a shirt and you move, does the shirt actually move? The Solar System orbits around the Milky Way, but does ...
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what is the time mentioned after date (1962-07-03+02:00) the +02:00? [closed]

i was retrieving a some personalities birthday date through computer programming when i retrieve a person's birthday the result was ...
324 views

What causes horizontal and vertical lines coming out of pictures of stars?

What causes the horizontal and vertical lines coming out of pictures of stars, instead of them simply appearing as circles? For example, this picture from Wikipedia: .
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Accidental or deliberate? [duplicate]

We know that the visual size of the Sun and Moon from the Earth in our lifetime (!) is nearly equivalent. Now my question: Is this event is random? Or have a scientific reason? For example, maybe ...
66 views

Eclipse on the moon

What kinds of eclipse is seen by the person on the moon, when there is: Solar eclipse on the earth, and Lunar eclipse on the earth?
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How much larger would a star have to be to cause thermonuclear reactions if it was made out of mostly rock like Earth, instead of gases?

I assume it would have to be considerably larger since rock isn't as flammable as gases are? But it's also more dense to begin with.. Do we know of any suns that are made like this? Is it even ...
611 views

How to calculate conjunctions of 2 planets

So, the recent conjunction of Jupiter and Venus seems to have spawned lots of excitement over this "rare" event. But what I can't figure out, is exactly how rare it is. And I've seen such conflicting ...
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Are mass extinction events more likely during meteor showers / passing through comet debris?

Meteor showers happen when Earth passes through the debris left by a comet in its orbit. Meteors are generally tiny, like snow flings or pebbles and don't make it to the ground as meteorites. But ...
274 views

How can Halley's Comet be predictable?

How can we know that Halley's Comet is going to come again every 76 years? I understand that the comet has an orbit around the sun but how can scientists know that it won't be thrown off course for ...
286 views

What is the brightest star (by absolute magnitude) that we can see by naked eye?

Is it Rho Cassiopeiae or Mu Sagittarii? I see in the Stellarium 0.13.0 that Mu Sagittarii has absolute magnitude -11.43!!
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What is the next planned mission that can discover life on another planet? [closed]

I've heard that we have a great shot at finding life on Mars if we just drill deep enough down to the surface to the water and detect if its sterile or not. Are there planned missions to do this? If ...
106 views

How to find Exomoons?

How would we be able to detect Exomoons? We detect exoplanets by seeing if the light gets faint from a star, but could we really use the same method for determining if there is an exomoon around that ...
121 views

Stellar mass database

I need a stellar mass database that also has the distance of the star/system from the sun. Can anybody tell me the name of such of database and where I can find it. I need to do a project on this. ...
170 views

Does a week represent something in astronomy? [duplicate]

I know that a day represent the time for the earth to make a full rotation around its own axis and a year is the time for the earth to make a full rotation around the sun. But does a week represent ...
61 views

How far away would a supernucleus comet be visible?

If an instrument like LSST quickly spots something as soon as it reaches magnitude 24½, how far away would a 60km first-time visitor from the Oort cloud be when it is spotted? I'm thinking that a ...
178 views

Is the diameter of the observable universe a relative quantity?

The diameter of my observable universe is 90 billion ly measured in proper distance. But isn't lenght a relative quantity in the theory of Relativity? Could an observer moving at a different velocity ...
2k views

When will the next summer solstice and a full moon coincide? What day?

What day will the summer solstice and full moon coincide? As far as I know the next time will be in 2016. I would like to know what day.
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What is the projection of Earth's axis on the sphere with the Sun in center (see explanation)

Seems like it is the most convenient SE community for this question.. Imagine the sphere, witch center is the Sun and radius is, say, ~1.5 distance from Sun to earth (in arbitrary time, precise ...
305 views

How to calculate the limiting magnitude of Hubble?

I've found various sources on the web stating that the limiting apparent magnitude of the Hubble Space Telescope is about 31 or 31.5. Wikipedia lists that here and it has a cite to a pdf about it. ...
98 views

Which is the shape of the sky?

I'm a software developer and I'm developing a planetarium and the first thing that I don't know is: What is the shape of the sky? First, I though that it is a semi-sphere, but searching on Internet I ...
55 views

material exchange between a planet and its host

Of the exo-planets found so far, there is one that can exchange material much with its host? How to prove that? Io may be a good example, but it is not a planet.
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Dark Matter Detection

A paper appeared at the arXiv.org (in April or May) claimed that the writers have found the gamma rays emitted by annihilation of dark matter in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way by examining the ...
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What to do after first year of amateur astronomy? [closed]

I have practiced astronomy as a hobby for a while now. I have an entry-level telescope (6-inch Newtonian). In addition to observing the night sky, I have been studying physics related to optics, ...
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Abbreviations for days of the week

Is there a set of standard abbreviations for the days of the week for use in astronomy? I couldn't find any reference to it in the The IAU Style Manual (1989).
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Are space telescopes completely out of the earth's atmosphere?

Is the Hubble Space Telescope, and every other space telescope for that matter, completely outside the Earths atmosphere?
152 views

How/where to check where the Sun is (constellation)?

I would like to check in which constellation the Sun was in at some time in the past, any recommendations how to do that?
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If nothing can pass the schwarzschild radius, how can black holes even start? [duplicate]

From our point of view, no object can fall into a black hole in finite time. The object will seem to be more and more red-shifted to us, but it will never quite pass the schwarzschild-radius / event ...
204 views

Has the great Andromeda Galaxy ever collided with any galaxies?

We know that the Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards the Milky Way and vice versa, so there will be a collision. Because of the vast space between them, the stars as they are defined will not ...
390 views

How long will it take Pluto to grow to planet size? [closed]

Pretty much everything in our solar system has collisions with smaller objects that lead to an increase in the mass of the larger. With Pluto being one of the largest things in the area of which it ...
71 views

Is “Main Sequence” a temporal sequence?

Stars plotted by luminosity and surface temperature fit into patterns in a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. A rough diagonal subset of this plot is called the main sequence. Is this in any sense a ...
101 views

Star formation analogy

If I have understood correctly, stars form in big clouds of gas and dust that are pulled together by their gravity. And the stars are often ignited when something disturbs the cloud, such as a passing ...
481 views

How does gravity interact with a photon?

If photon is mass-less and gravity can interact only with matter, then how does gravity alter the trajectory of light?