# All Questions

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### What happens to the energy from a GRB?

A gamma ray burst produces somewhere around 1044 J of energy, according to Wikipedia. Only a small portion of that energy will be absorbed by other objects. The rest of that energy will go on to ...
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### What if the black hole in the center of the galaxy grew faster?

Imagine that hypothetically the black hole in the center of the milky way gradually increased in mass by for example 50% every year. That is exponential increase in mass. Which visual effects would ...
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### How Far Are We From the Edge of the Universe? [duplicate]

Following the Big Bang the Universe continues to expand, presumably and roughly equally in all directions. It is understood that the Big Bang occurred 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago. Is there ...
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### Relation between black hole mass and radius, and our universe's

Is there a graph of known black holes, with their estimated mass in the X axis and their estimated radius in the Y axis? If so, where can we find it? I would like to know if a black whole with the ...
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### Periodic behavior of Venus

After a couple months of watching a very bright Venus appear at dusk and set soon after the Sun, I've noticed that it seems to have temporarily disappeared to the naked eye. I used a virtual sky ...
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### 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 ...
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### Spacetime curvature illustration accuracy

When a particle travels through spacetime, this is sometimes illustrated moving in flat grid with various depths. How accurate is this way of imagining gravity? Can the gravity well be infinitely ...
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### What is difference between our time and space time?

I am trying to understand the phenomenon of space-time. But, everything on internet seems to be too complicated for me since I do not have a background in physics. Can anyone give me simple ...
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### Are Gamma Ray Bursts of galactic or extragalactic origin?

I read about the 1995 Lamb-Paczynski debate on whether GRBs are galactic or extragalactic in origin. With our current experimental evidence, have we found whether GRBs are galactic or extragalactic?
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### By putting a mirror in space, would we be able to see into the past?

I only ask this because of how fast light travels. The question remains in the title. Why, or why not, would this work?
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### Mechanisms of binary/multiple star formation

What are mechanisms of binary/multiple star formation in different mass ranges (low, intermediate and high stellar masses)?
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### Magnetic fields of peculiar HgMn A type stars

Are HgMn (peculiar A type) stars really possess global magnetic fields? See, for example, paper Hubrig et al. 2012: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.2910
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### Could dark matter particles be unstable?

Is it possible that dark matter particles are unstable and the existing dark matter will decay in the long run and turn into hydrogen, for example? What would be possible mechanisms for such a decay? ...
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### what is the highest throughput astronomy project in pixels?

I was having a discussing about big scientific projects with colleagues, and I postulated that astronomy is still one of the scientific fields with biggest projects per amount of data dealt with, ...
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### Where can I find good places to watch stars? [duplicate]

Where can I find good places to watch stars near me? I live in Leicestershire, England and am looking for good places to watch the sky nearby.
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### Did time pass more slowly in the past?

13 billion years ago, the universe was about 600 million years old according to many scientists. At that time, all matter in the universe would have to be closer, or in other words denser. Did time ...
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### Can redshift be measured using fourier?

Are there pictures that contain high enough dynamic width, so that amateurs can use fourier spectrum analysis to observe the redshift themselves? I know pictures usually are encoded using RGB and/or ...
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### Pictures of large galaxies

The Andromeda Galaxy is tens of thousands of light years in diameter. That suggests that the most distant stars in the Andromeda galaxy is up to tens of thousands of years "behind" in their orbit ...
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### Will new stars stop forming at some point of time?

New stars keep forming in the universe thanks to all the nebulae. Now, we need Hydrogen to form stars and there would a time when all the hydrogen will get exhausted, and no more star formation will ...
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### Can you identify this telescope in a desert? [closed]

It should be in a desert. 5-15 similar lens cones are binded together,small size(about 30 cm?),same direction. The purpose is to find exoplanet? It is like WASP below. It is in a desert and lower ...
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### Are we made of the stuff of one star or more stars?

[T]his coincidence enabled stars in the late stages of their lives to turn helium into carbon, oxygen and most of the other atoms that you and I are made of. [...] [W]e're made of star stuff. Max ...
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### Could the earth's atmosphere have been partially stripped by a passing rogue planet?

I am involved in the fight between palaeontologists and aerodynamicists on the theoretical flight capabilities of the largest pterosaurs (who reached their climax in the Cretaceous and then ...
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### Where is all the antimatter?

The universe supposedly started off with equal parts matter and antimatter and they are said to annihilate each other. Also, nature is famous for it's balance between everything. So all we see is ...
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### How can the life time of a multiple star system, such as for example the trinary system PSR J0337+1715 be derived?

As for example explained at the beginning of this blog post, the trinary system consists of a millisecond pulsar ($1.438$ times the mass of the sun) orbited by two white dwarfs. One of the white ...
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### Age and relativity [closed]

This is a question, where I start with some assertions: Try to consider the universe as a four-coordinate system, x,y,z,t where t is time and where we view a change in t as a change in position, and ...
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### Emulation of an Orrery

Orrery is a clockwork model of the solar system. I am trying to emulate one in 2D. Now, to emulate, I need to know what goes on inside. Can someone please explain the basic principle behind the ...
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### apparent size of an astronomical body

What's the name of the measure of apparent (visible) size of a body? e.g. the Sun and the Moon appear to be roughly the same size, despite the Sun being vastly bigger - because the Moon is much ...
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### Why can we sometimes see the moon during the day?

At some points in the year, the moon at my location can be clearly visible during the day. Why is this? If it is any help, I live in Alberta, Canada.
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### Does gravity slow or speed light up?

The speed of light in a vacuum is presumably the fastest speed possible. if gravity bends the course of light, does this imply that gravity the retards light so it is moving at a slower speed? If ...
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### 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, ...
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### Why do we have the cosmological constant?

Since the cosmological constant is not required to explain that the universe seem to be expanding, why do we have it? What other factors cause us to have that constant? Background: Without the ...
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### When we say a galaxy is 200 million light years away, does this account for the expansion of space in the time it took it's light to reach us?

When we see a distant galaxy, the light we are watching started it's journey millions of years ago. In all that time, space has been expanding, so if the initial distance was A, right now the distance ...
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### What is the relationship between the focal length and f number of a telescope compared to a guide scope?

How do you determine the optimal length of a guide scope for a given imaging telescope? I imagine it would have to take into consideration the pixel size of the guide scope, but would the aperture ...
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### Why are planets spherical?

I am a complete novice when it comes to astronomy, but someone asked me the above question casually. It seems as though planets are all roughly spherical, whereas other celestial bodies aren't ...
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### Heavy star and redshift

A heavy star should look redshifted, due to gravitational time dilation. How is that incorporated into the calculations of distances to the stars, or is it negligible? How about an entire region of ...
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### Does gravity propagate?

Gravity is sometimes described as a curvature in space-time. Due to relativity, doesn't this imply that gravity doesn't propagate? A thought experiment. If you are moving toward a black hole, this ...
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### Are nebulae only visible from a distance?

There's plenty of data about the density of nebulae, and obviously they're pretty thin. This is space, after all, and these things are really, really big. But I'm wondering about the practical ...
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### Do galaxies have a preferred orientation?

This article: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/25/was-the-universe-born-spinning asserts that the universe was "born spinning" and that there is a preferred rotation direction for ...
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### How to plot orbit of binary star and calculate its orbital elements?

I have a set of dates, position angles ($\theta$) and angular separations ($\rho$) for visual binary star. For example: ...
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### How can satellites be safe in the atmosphere when there are so many asteroids coming in?

How can artificial satellites be safe in the atmosphere when there are hundreds of tons of dust and asteroids coming into earth's atmosphere everyday? What is an orbit of an artificial satellite? ...
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### Is the discovery of Alien or Extra Terrestrial Life a function of the science of Astronomy?

Is the discovery of Alien or Extra Terrestrial Life a function of the science of Astronomy? When i read astronomy articles on the search for new Planets or discussions on Mars a lot of the topic is on ...
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### Martian Brother [closed]

According to some documentaries History and Discovery, fossils have been found in a meteorite that fell to earth. This meteorite came from Mars. It is possible that the Martians always try to be ...
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### How does light affect the universe?

When light is emitted by for example a star, that star loses energy - which causes it to reduce its gravity. Then that energy begins a journey for potentially billions of years, until it reaches some ...
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### How does gravity affect the wavelength of light?

If, hypothetically, me and my rocket powered flashlight were falling straight toward the center of a black hole. The flashlight is a few kilometers behind me in our travels toward the center of the ...
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### Black Holes emitting Hawking radiation

I've read that even light cannot escape from black holes. The speed of light is theoretically predicted to be the escape velocity of a black hole. I've also read that the general notion that nothing ...
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### How does a telescope measure parallax angle?

I know how stars' distances are measured by using parallax, but I want to know how the actual telescope measures the parallax angle. Any helpful links/ explanations are needed.
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### (Sound) Echo from X takes 5-7 days, [closed]

Hey I want to describe an event A happening roughtly 5-7 after event B. I'd like to describe it as the 'A happened after the sound of B echo'd off X', where X is recognisable space thingy... (I'm ...
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### Where is Voyager 1 (or 2) going? In which direction?

Knowing it has exited the solar system, is it traveling in the direction of the center of the galaxy, away from it, orbiting it, or maybe even going perpendicular from the disk-shaped galaxy?