# All Questions

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### Are there many faint meteors that are too faint to see with the naked eye?

I remember one time a while back looking at the night sky through night vision goggles. One interesting thing I noticed is that there appeared to be many very faint meteors in the sky practically all ...
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### What is the degree of ionization is the solar photosphere?

I am wondering how many free electrons per baryon and how many free electrons per atom there are in the solar photosphere. This number depends on the abundances of the various atoms found in the ...
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### Is there enough hydrogen left after a star dies so another star will have enough to light up?

A star consumes quite a lot of hydrogen in its life, and is pretty much "vacuuming" everything in its vicinity. After it dies (eventually by supernova which will spread all its composition over light ...
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### Leonid meteor showers and the Tempel-Tuttle comet

I've been reading about the Leonid meteor showers and am struggling to understand one piece of information. On Wikipedia (Tempel-Tuttle), it states: The orbit of 55P/Tempel–Tuttle intersects that ...
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### 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 ...
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### Is broadcasting the location of Earth to potential extraterrestial civilization regulated?

How many times have we broadcast the location of Earth to the outer space? Are there any regulation in doing so? I know so far we have send the Arecibo Message, and any receiver can trace the message ...
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### Can the Philae lander survive one orbit of 67P? [migrated]

The Aphelion of Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko is about 5.6829 AU. It has a orbital period of 6.44 years. If it stays on the comet for the entire period of its orbit, can it be usable when it is in the ...
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### Does the Moon have an aurora?

If the Moon has a magnetic field and can possibly receive solar wind, then does it have an aurora? If Earth has an aurora, and Saturn has an aurora, then could the Moon possibly have an aurora?
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### What are some applicable problems with the correct usage of G?

In some fields of astrophysics, where distances are measured in parsecs (pc), velocities in kilometers per second (km/s) and masses in solar units (), it is useful to express G as approximately 4.302 ...
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### What should I look for in an astronomy tripod?

I have a Celstron SkyMaster 20x80 binoculars, and a tripod — Vanguard 263AT with a SBH-100 head. The binoculars weighs 2.2kg, while the head is rated to a loading capacity of 10kg, and the legs to a ...
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### How deep and shaped is the depth of a black hole?

A common representation of a black hole is a black circle which if I'm correct, indicates its breadth. This representation depicts it as a 'plate', so a really small depth compared to its breadth. ...
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### Is the dark energy between the moon and Earth measurable in any capacity?

What are the experiments, or measurements, that can detect, or account for, dark energy involved in making calculations concerning Earth and its only natural satellite?
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### From what distance can one object influence gravity of another object?

Each object in the universe has its own gravitational influence on all other objects in the universe. What distance do they have to be from each other to create only one gravitational influence? ...
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### Why is the Oort cloud presumed to be spherical?

Most descriptions of the Oort cloud depict it as a mostly spherical distribution of planetesimals, with occasional allowance for an inner component that is more donut-shaped. This is slightly at odds ...
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### Why all the photos from 67p are black and white?

I was wondering why every picture we saw on internet about Rosetta's landing on 67p just black and white ? Is there something i should know ?
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### Where is the center point for the Supergalactic coordinate system?

Im trying to build a 3D visualization of the Supergalactic coordinate system and couldnt find any reference to where the center point should be (sun, galactic center, earth, etc). Also I already ...
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### The defintion of star/planetary/solar system

In many science fiction stories, we hear the term star system that mostly refers to a star and its planets. This is often used interchangeably with the term solar system. But after some research I ...
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### Strong force and metric expansion

If the expansion of the universe (the metric) continues (and perhaps is accelerating), in a very large but finite time the expansion of the metric will clash with the effects of the strong nuclear ...
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### Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar - what is the rate of mass/energy loss from the source?

Following on from an earlier question about the very interesting Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar. The high-frequency (radio) beam from the spinning pulsar sweeps across Earth about 17 times per second. ...
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### Where did this famous Planetary Precession Formula come from?

The following equation (which I shall term the Planetary Precession Formula, PPF for short) famously appeared in a 1915 publication by Einstein where he indicated how it could be derived from his ...
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### Is a Wormhole a tunnel? [closed]

In films such as Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Contact (and also Star Trek Deep Space Nine) wormholes are depicted as tunnels along the edges of which fantastical colours and shapes lie. ...
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### How to compute satellite coordinates (lat,long) given antenna's coordinates, angles and satellite height

Given an Earth station (antenna) coordinates (in lat,long) ant its Elevation (El) and Azimuth (Az), how to compute the satellite coordinates (lat,long), known its height? For simplification purposes, ...
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### Why did the moon abruptly change positions in the sky?

Three or four weeks ago I was outside showing my neighbors how cool the moon was through a 'backyard' telescope in broad daylight (~8PM PDT). It was 3/4 of the way across the sky (setting behind the ...
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### Given a date obtain latitude and longitude where is the sun zenith

Searching is easy to find terminator line (frontier between day and night) or the position of the sun in the sky given a position on the earth and a time; but I can't find how to obtain where is the ...
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### If the Wow! signal was not directed at us, then where?

We probably all know the Wow!-Signal, happened on August 15, 1977. Assume that it wasn't meant for us. What was it pointing at then? The signal at that time came from RA= 19h25m31s ± 10s or 19h28m22s ...
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### How is the universe bordered?

This answer says that some models describes the universe as finite. How do those models describe the universe's border? Does the border (theoretically) exist? Is it a solid border? Do they predict ...
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### Can General Relativity indicate phase-dependent variations in planetary orbital acceleration?

In a previous question about differences in Newtonian and GTR gravitional force for the case of star-planet gravitational interactions an approximate relationship was noted between the expressions for ...
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### Number density of stars on the Galactic plane

The number density of stars (e.g. the number of stars per cubic parsec) is given by $$N(z) = N(0) e^{-|z|/h}$$ where $z$ is the height above the Galactic plane, $h$ is the scale height for a specific ...
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### Assuming a sufficient amount of mass above the density threshold, does the actual concentration of the mass matter in creating a black hole?

I've heard that the actual density of a black hole (within the volume of the event horizon) is pretty low - does that mean that any sufficiently large volume of mass over that density is also a black ...
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### Instrumental magnitude to “real” magnitude - Photometry with not enough data?

I have a lot of data taken in R, B, V, Luminance and Halpha-bands which I want to analyse photometrically (one target in the frame). The frames are already reduced (with flats, darks etc.) and have a ...
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### 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 ...
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### How many observations does it take to determine the orbit of a TNO

Several observations of a distant solar object must be taken before determining its orbit, but in the case of objects discovered beyond Neptune's orbit, just how many are required over what period of ...
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### Super massive black hole mass estimation in literature

What is the most accurate method for SMBH mass estimation? In the literature I could find 5 methods : (1) Marconi & Hunt 2003, (2) Hu 2008, (3) Gultekin et al. 2009, (4) Graham 2007, (5) McLure ...
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### Why can you see the space station on some days but not on others?

In my area, from December 17th - 26th, you can see the space station every day, twice But from December 27th - January 6th, you can only see it twice My question is, why does it appear for ...
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### Is it possible to break apart a neutron star?

I was inspired by this question on Physics, as well as this question right here on Astronomy. Neutron stars are tightly bound together as neutron degenerate matter. They're very massive and have a ...
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### How many new galaxies enter the observable universe each day/year/decade?

Each day light has more time to reach our eyes from distant galaxies. In one day, light travels 2.59×10^10 km. So our observable universe (assuming my simple math skills apply here and there isn't ...
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### Which stars did the Sun form with?

The Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, in a molecular cloud. I assume that there were other stars in the vicinity (as is common in molecular clouds). Which stars are they? Where are they now? Are they ...
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### How bright are the outer planets, when at close range?

Seven probes have passed by or orbited outer planets. I wonder how their photos differ from the naked eye view one would have if one were actually there. Saturn is 10 AU from the Sun, which means ...
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### At what density does helium burning start in a star?

I have seen several references that say that helium burning begins in a star once the core temperature reaches $10^8$K (such as here) but nowhere that says what density that corresponds to. Does ...
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### Climate modeling of exoplanets

These notes from an exoplanet talk discuss modeling the climate of exoplanets. How would we do that with our current technology? Would data be primarily gathered by spectrum analysis?
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### VSOP for exosatellites? (Io, Titan, Ariel, etc)

VSOP87 (and the subsequent VSOP2000 and VSOP2013) provide reasonably accurate planetary positions while still maintaining a small file size compared to the Chebyshev polynomial files. VSOP ...
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### Classification of a Comet

Google's definition of a comet is: a celestial object consisting of a nucleus of ice and dust and, when near the sun, a ‘tail’ of gas and dust particles pointing away from the sun. This ...
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### Explanation for the mathematics behind Venus' retrograde motion

I've always been interested by the pattern within Venus' orbit around the sun. I found this image and formula of its retrograde motion in the upper right hand corner which confused me. What does it ...
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### What is the distance that the Moon travels during one orbit around the Earth?

Also, does it always take the same amount of time, or does it fractionally differ on each revolution?
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### If Jupiter is a gas-giant then why don't its features change?

A naive question. When we look at Jupiter, we see that its features didn't change largely over many years, for instance, the red-spot. If it is composed of gases and liquids, then why aren't the ...
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### Orbiting supermassive black hole or galactic center of mass?

One of the ways they measure the (supposed?) supermassive black hole at the galactic center of the milky way is to measure those tens of stars right at the galactic center that are orbiting what ...
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### Why did the big bang not just produce a big black hole?

Questions I've often wondered about: 1) If all the matter and energy were concentrated at a single point at the big bang, why wasn't that a black hole, or why didn't it form one? 2) If the reason #1 ...
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### 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 ...