# All Questions

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### 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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### What happens to the information on the event horizons of two merging black holes?

What happens to the hairiness/information on the horizons of two black holes if they collide? After Hawkin the information of the matter which has fallen into the blackhole is encoded on the surface ...
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### Protocol for establishing longitudinal meridians on other heavenly bodies

When we first observe a new heavenly body (it could be a new star, asteroid, etc., but let's say a minor planet in our own solar system), are there any procedures set in place for establishing a ...
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### 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 to ...
120 views

### Does CIBER Experiment from Caltech suggest that there can be lots of stars which are not in any galaxy?

My question is about the implications of the observations recently made by the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment, or CIBER, from Caltech. I've read at Caltech web site: "The total light ...
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### What is it that distinguishes one atmospheric layer from another?

The atmosphere of a planetary body (assuming it has an atmosphere) is described as being made up of distinct layers. For example, Earth, Saturn and Jupiter all have a stratosphere and a ...
7k views

### How many planets are there in this solar system?

So, in school (that's a long time age) they have been teaching us there are 9 planets in our solar system. Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto But every now and then I ...
42 views

### My supernovae question [duplicate]

I understand the collapse of a star during a supernova, as the outward pressure cannot compete with the gravitational field. Is it conceivable, that a relaxation of the space-time curvature is what ...
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### Has the Kepler data been examined for light curves due to phase changes of non-transitting hot Jupiters and other?

I found this article http://www.epj-conferences.org/articles/epjconf/pdf/2011/01/epjconf_ohp2010_03005.pdf from 2011 announcing that two dozen secondary eclipses of "hot Jupters" have been seen in ...
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### Why do PMS stars on the Hayashi track remain at a constant temperature while they contract?

Why do pre-main-sequence stars on the Hayashi track remain at a constant temperature while they contract? I've read the Wikipedia article, so no need to repeat the derivation. What I took away from ...
51 views

### Stellar systems: what is the difference between virial, dynamical and thermodynamic equilibrium?

I'm currently going through Binney & Tremaine (2008) on my own to learn about stellar dynamics. I also have been perusing additional online resources such as this scholarpedia wiki. Often when ...
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### Reasoning questions on eclipses

why doesn't a solar eclipse occur in every new moon? I know one reason is the inclination of Earth's orbital plane. But is there another?
390 views

### Could light be dark matter?

Is it possible that light itself is dark matter? I am speaking of photons (e.g. visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, etc...). I realize light is understood to be massless, but it is obvious it at ...
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### Oxygen in a methane atmosphere akin to methane in oxygen atmosphere?

If we assume a planet the size of Earth with an equally dense atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, rather than oxygen, and it's in the goldilocks zone. Would a hypothetical alien species be able to use ...
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### What would happen if we changed Earth's orbit? [closed]

If one day we have enough technology to push the Earth away a bit further from the sun to reduce global warming, is it true that it will start to distort the orbits of Mars and Venus, giving them a ...
528 views

### Do black holes have energy?

So black holes are created by certain dying stars and when the star runs out of nuclear energy gravity wins out and the star implodes. An entire star’s mass collapses down into a smaller and smaller ...
62 views

### How do we know background radiation does not come from undiscovered galaxies?

Each year while observing voids, astronomers discover more and more unexpected galaxies within them. How do we know the cosmic microwave background radiation is not the weak light from distant ...
42 views

### gravitational time dilation multiple sources

I wondered how time would be dilated for an object in the middle of 2 black holes, however https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation only provides a formula for one source of gravity ...
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 ...
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### Are Wikipedia's sun ecliptic-coordinate formulae accurate?

I'm creating a C++ program that calculates the ecliptic coordinates based on the formulae from Wikipedia But, my calculations appear off. The mean anomaly for today, for example, should be ...
91 views

### Recommendation for learning about stellar astrophysics

I would like to know which are the best books to learn about stellar astrophysics at (just) graduate level. I have a basic formation in general astrophysics but I'm interested in learning about ...
60 views

### How can cosmic inflation make an infinite universe homogeneous?

As it is explained in this video, one of cosmic inflation's observable effects is the homogeneity of our universe. Inflation allows two points on the different sides of the observable universe to be ...
106 views

### Could mirrors be replaced with CCDs?

Why do telescopes use mirrors that simply reflect photons, when they instead could be covered with large sensors to register them? Reflection is all good and well, all thanks to silver and beryllium ...
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### A good website for laymen to share their discoveries?

This is a wonderful Q&A forum, but I'm wondering if anybody knows of a good website where someone can let other people interested in astronomy know about new things that they have become aware of: ...
41 views

### Magnitude, satellite flare and the Heavens Above app

On the Heavens above app for Android and maybe iOS, it shows negative magnitude values for Iridium satellites, but for other ones, it shows positive. Here is a screenshot Why is this?
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### Oldest Reference to Astronomical Seeing

I'm writing a paper on astronomical seeing. Sir Isaac Newton identified both the phenomenon and origin of astronomical seeing in his Opticks. He writes: ...
44 views

### Simulates Orbit [duplicate]

I IT developer, and I would code a small program that simulates the orbit of two bodies, the problem of two bodies eventually. I have no problem on the part programming but I have a little trouble ...
6k views

### Did I see another planet?

A couple days ago, I zoomed in with my 30x optical zoom camera, and after some exposure adjustments, a bright star in the night sky turned into this: Are those other planets or other stars? Or is ...
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### Are there events in universe which we receive first from their neutrino's instead of their photons?

Neutrino's are very small though they have mass. Because of that it is probably that the don't have a speed faster than photons. But is it in all events, like supernova's or else events, where it is ...
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### Are there any galaxies which fell out of sight horizon due to cosmic expansion?

If farthest galaxies run away from us with acceleration making them exceed speed of light, we should expect them to disappear from sky among time with increasing quantity. Did we observe this? Can we ...
3k views

### Why doesn't Earth's axis change during the year?

My understanding is that the Earth's axis points in the same direction in space during its entire orbit around the sun. And this is what causes our seasons. My question is why doesn't the axis follow ...
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### At the moment of total solar eclipse what are exact distances of Moon & Sun to the Earth

By total eclipse I mean the Moon and Sun are seen equal in size, neither of them is bigger. For example, the Moon's average distance is 384000 km and the Sun's average distance is 149.5 million km. ...
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### How do I modify redshifts to gain corrected line of sight velocities?

I'm currently trying to collect the data to run an N-body simulation for 11 of the galaxies in the Local Group where proper motions are known, however I don't understand how to get the required line ...
53 views

### Gravitational field released during supernovae

During the collapse of a star at the commencement of supernovae, the intense pressures force fusion and fission to create the heavier elements and release vast amounts of energy. As this energy/mass ...
63 views

### Why are radar images of comets shaded only on one side?

NASA published a picture of a comet the other day. The image shows the comet being lit from above. See NASA's picture below. However, since it is a radar image, I would have assumed to get a ...
163 views

### Does Mars contain more iron than the Earth?

Is the reason Mars is red because its surface contains a lot of iron? (When dirt is red on Earth, it is sometimes caused by a high amount of iron). If so, does Mars contain more iron than the earth? ...
234 views

### Why does the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram's x-axis go from large temperatures to lower?

In my textbook, the H–R diagram’s y-axis is $\log(L/L_{\odot})$ and values are higher as we go higher on the scale, but the x-axis is $\log(T_\text{eff})$ and gets smaller as we proceed to the right. ...
106 views

### Why Milky Way and Andromeda are being drawn together if there was 'Big Bang'?

Scientists used to use following reasoning: most galaxies are red-shifted $\implies$ there was a 'Big Bang' Why this is being considered valid since not every galaxy has such property?
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### Dark matter inertial mass

We know the existence of dark matter because we can test its gravitational mass (e.g. in gravitational lens) but, since we cannot see this matter, how we can be sure that it has an inertial mass, and ...
1k views

### Does matter accumulate just outside the event horizon of a black hole?

My understanding is that time slows and approaches stopping when approaching the event horizon of a black hole. I have seen this explained several places, including a brief explanation in the last ...
7k views

### How does neutron star collapse into black hole?

We know the spectacular explosions of supernovae, that when heavy enough, form black holes. The explosive emission of both electromagnetic radiation and massive amounts of matter is clearly observable ...
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### How could a neutron star collapse into a black hole?

White dwarfs usually do not collapse, as they have electron degeneracy pressure due to the Pauli exclusion principle. However, if one accretes mass beyond the Chandrasekhar limit, it is energetically ...
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### Could the Sun's bending of light be measured on photographic plates before Einstein's prediction?

It was predicted from Newtonian physics already in the 18th century that gravity should bend light, but not by as much as general relativity predicts. This was first confirmed during a solar eclipse ...
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### How old is our Sun in Galactic years?

A year is measured as the amount of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun once, a Galactic year is the time it takes our sun to make one full orbit of the center of the Galaxy. In Galactic years, how ...
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### What is the boundary of the space or can the space around us has limits? [duplicate]

When i see this vast universe, I usually had a question in my mind that, what is the limit of the space? I know its childish, but I have this curiosity.
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### What explains the distribution of new impact craters on Mars?

24 minutes into this van Karman lecture by Dr. Tamppari, the slide below is shown with symbols for transient events on Mars. Red dots represent meteoroid impacts which have occurred while MRO has been ...
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### Initially non-flat space-time makes dark matter obsolete$\dots$

After the Big Bang, dark matter clusters and build the seeds for visible matter, that then forms stars, planet, you, me, everybody... But do we really need dark matter to build cluster first. What if ...
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### If a star were to suddenly lose nearly all of its stored heat, would it be able to return to its normal state? [closed]

If not, would it be possible to approximate the maximum heat energy a star could lose before the change became irreversible?