# All Questions

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### Inclination of planets

Why do the planets have roughly the same inclination with respect to Earth? Looking at the inclinations, which I got from http://www.astronomynotes.com/tables/tablesb.htm , we see that Mercury has ...
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### Can we hear something on Venus, Mars and Titan?

Mars, Venus and Titan have an atmosphere and we can theoretically step on them (and die quickly). So, as an example, let's say we can survive on these objects without a space suit. I say: “Hi” on any ...
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### Does near light-speed travel doppler-shift the light from the target into gamma rays?

If a space ship travels at near the speed of light towards a star, wouldn't the light from the star doppler shift into gamma rays (or worse?) and become lethal to life and destructive to space ship ...
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### Is the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image representative of the entire sky?

The Hubble ultra-deep field image is a photograph of an area of sky equivalent to a 1mm x 1mm piece of paper held a metre away from the eye (one thirteen millionth of the entire sky). It contains an ...
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### Could a habitable satellite of a gas giant have a stable subsatellite?

I have set a science fiction story on a moon, orbiting a gas giant (which orbits its star at approximately the same orbit as the Earth around the Sun), and given this moon its own satellites. The ...
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### Where does the Milky Way end?

I was reading this article and it says the following: Researchers measured the mass of the Milky Way and found that our galaxy is approximately half the weight of a neighbouring galaxy known as ...
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### Does the universe have an edge?

I've heard the universe is just an empty cavity. Does the universe have any edge or stop or is it just an infinite empty cavity?
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### Landing on an “earth-like” planet (practical application)

This may not belong here in astronomy and my apologies if that's the case. The hypothetical: We find, and are able to travel to (in a reasonably short amount of time), a planet that is for all intents ...
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### What did I see streaking across the sky last night?

I was enjoying a casual naked eye view of the summer sky last night around midnight in a new jersey beach town. The sky was pretty clear for around here.The Milkyway was just visible and there was no ...
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### Maximum Amplitude of a Lissajous Orbiting Object in a L4 or L5 Position

I stumbled on The Lagrangian points during some wikipedia reading. After looking at the gravity contours, I naturally come to the conclusion that the L4 & L5 should have a wave pattern and then ...
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### Black dwarf binary systems

I know black dwarf stars do not exist yet, and that they are what white dwarfs end up after a long time. The question is really simple: would it be possible to have a binary system in which one of the ...
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### how did James Bradley discover light aberration?

I do not understand his timing method. James The magnitude of the aberration could be v/c? The speed of earth is about ...
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### Does mass create space?

Imagine two cubes each with the side 1 light year. One of the cubes is empty of any matter. The other cube contains a massive star. Does the cube which contains the massive star have a larger volume ...
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### Compute Planet's Apparent Visual Magnitude

In a hypothetical solar system there exist: a sun of radius $r_s$ and absolute visual magnitude $V$ the Earth, with radius $r_e$ and distance from the sun of $1\,AU$ another planet, wit radius ...
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### Is there a theoretical maximum size limit for a star?

Some stars are simply huge. Eventually, though, wouldn't there be simply too much pressure or mass for the star to sustain itself? Wouldn't it eventually collapse into a black hole? Is there a ...
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### Do star systems stripped from galaxies have different expected behavior?

Another way of stating this question: Does the fact that a star system (or comparable concentrated mass) exists in a galaxy affect its long-term evolution, in terms of expansion, contraction, ...
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### Why can't we determine the center of the universe [duplicate]

I find this baffling. If we can observe objects moving away from us and each other, than it stands to reason that we can track their paths (relative to each other and ourselves) backward to find a ...
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### is there any theory or observational evidence that our universe is electrically neutral or not?

It seems our universe is neutral in large scale. There is CP violationwiki problem about matter and dark matter. Similarly is there any theory about whether our universe is electrically neutral? ...
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### seasons elongating and shortening

I have heard of years with longer summers and winters and shorter springs and falls and vice versa because of a change in the earths axis. Is this from the procession that causes the season switch ...
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### How are the speed, distance and time of India's MOM and USA's Maven Mars missions calculated?

How do the scientists calculate the correct time to launch the Mars mission so that the satellite travel time is less? How they are synchronizing the speed of satellite with respect to earth and mars ...
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### How distances are measured in the Solar System, in the Galaxy, and in the Universe?

Distances in our universe can be calculated in several ways: Stellar Parallax Standard Candles Redshift How are these methods linked, and how they are actually used to calculate distances are ...
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### How did the reionization epoch make the universe “transparent”?

I've been reading about the reionization epoch of the universe, and it isn't entirely clear to me. As I understand it, very shortly after the big bang the universe was ionized, with the electrons ...
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### How do we determine something is “x” light years away? [duplicate]

I always read/hear "This galaxy is X thousand light years away" or some similar statement (for example see this table). Please excuse the naivety of question. How do we determine that some ...
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### Basic celestial data

complete beginner here, only got into star gazing a few days ago using my friend's telescope and I don't really understand at all what any of the measurements mean. Anyway, talk about jumping in the ...
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### Perception of an objects history passing as an observer moves toward it

If a star is 20 light-years away and I look at it through a telescope, what I'm observing is what the star was doing 20 years ago yes? So, if I fix my sight on the star and move toward it (for ...
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### Conundrum involving distance to object, universal expansion, age of universe, etc

I was recently reading about a galaxy or quasar (not sure which, so lets just say quasar) where the estimated distance to this thing was some very significant fraction of the age of the universe. ...
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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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### Are there standard algorithms and procedures for creating unique sky maps based on latitude/longitude/date/time?

I am trying to build an astronomy app that will use the user's latitude and longitude, along with the current date and time, to create a 3D view of the celestial sphere as seen based on that data. ...
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### What is this graph showing?

This is from the NED What do these three titles mean? log fb (Jy) MRK 1014 Log v (HZ) Why is there LINE,LINE,...
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### Quasars and SMBH

Quasars are known to contain supermassive Black Holes at their cores. So does that mean that the number of quasars is equal to that of the SMBHs out there?
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### Stellar mass of galaxies

Given the magnitudes (in the i-band) of certain galaxies, I would like to calculate their stellar mass (in terms of solar masses). So far, I have calculated their absolute magnitudes and gotten to ...
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### Can solar luminosity & activity be predicted?

Can a star's luminosity and its activity, solar flares and sunspots, be predicted? If so, with what accuracy & precision?
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### Are these facts about moon true?

I don't have much knowledge of Astronomy but today I was googling randomly and found an article, according to which: The moon is of the wrong size for its current orbit. The moon rings like a ...
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### What are possible methods of discerning a starburst AGN composite galaxy?

I'm currently working on an independent project that involves discerning starburst galaxies that are themselves within active galaxies. I would assume radio observations would be best to discern star ...
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### What's an order-of-magnitude main sequence star look like?

I'm looking for a very rough, order-of-magnitude approach to the main sequence. What I mean is, I have a spherically-symmetric hydrogen distribution. I'm looking to get a rough approximation for ...
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### How does a gravity slingshot actually work?

From what I know of elliptical orbits, an object speeds up near the periapsis and slows down at the apoapsis, much like we learned in high school physics how a sphere would roll down and back up a ...
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### Would an ultra bright moon indicate that the world is ending?

There is a sci-fi television episode that shows a man looking out the window into the night sky. There up in the sky is the moon, and it's extraordinarily bright. The man spends the rest of the night ...
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### How massive does a planet need to be to create gravitational lensing?

Is it ever possible for starlight to be distorted in a noticeable way from something as small as a planet? I'm guessing that the chances of this working are better on a dense terrestrial planet than ...
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### What known comets are binary?

Many asteroids are today known to be binary, to have "moons". But what comets are known to be binary? Or what fraction of them are theoretically thought to be binary? And if possible, then separate ...
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### Can the asteroid belt be seen from Jupiter?

Suppose that someone lives in the neighborhood of Jupiter. He may live in a space station around Jupiter, or in any ot it's moons (I believe that it doesn't matter for this question). If this person ...
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### The RA and Dec of lunar poles

The moon faces the earth with one fixed side. However there is a small vibration. So I am not sure the south and north poles of the moon is fixed. Even if they are fixed points on the moon, the pole ...
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### How was the core temperature of the Sun estimated?

It was estimated that the heat inside the core of the Sun inside around 15 000 000 °C - this value is extremely enormous. How did scientists estimate this value?
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### Are ascending node of sun, the point of intersection of prime meridian and equator and center of earth all collinear?

I did a bit of googling but couldn't find the exact answer, so are the following 3 points collinear or not ? 1_center of earth 2_ascending(or descending) node of sun 3_point of intersection of ...
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### What is frequency range?

Using the NED, you can search via frequency range corresponding to the selected pass band filter. I'm a beginner here and don't really understand. Here's the quote: NOTES: Objects with ...
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### What is the bluest narrow band filter mounted on ground based telescopes?

If we want to check a QSO's lyman alpha narrow band image, could a ground based telescope do that? I mean under the circumstance that its lyman alpha shifts to 3300A.
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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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### What is the time/size/rigidity ratio for a space object to become mostly round?

In the answer here multiple comets are identified that do not form a single round body. A drop of water will form a round shape in the time it takes to free fall a couple of feet. All of the ...
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### Do planetary radio frequency change upon alignments?

If Neptune would align Uranus, would the radio frequency perceived on Earth increase? Are the radio antennas on NM capable of getting the 2 different radio frequencies feom both planets or would they ...