# All Questions

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### Pictures of a curious astronomical phenomenon

In a recent holiday, a friend made the following picture. It contains a curious green "thing" in the nightsky. The picture was made in Ladakh, India, 6weeks ago. The "thing" only appeared in one of ...
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### Evidence behind Giant Impact hypthesis

The giant impact hypothesis is a theory to explain how the moon was formed. What evidence is there that supports the theory and led us to find the current theory?
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### Do extraterrestrial landscapes or planets count as nature?

If I am talking about the surface of Mars, is this still nature, comparable to uninhabited places on earth, or does nature exclusively describe not man-made things on earth. I am asking this ...
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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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### How are stellar elemental abundances quoted?

Close to the bottom of page 4 of this article (marked as page 164 in the upper left corner) states Values are given in the logarithmic scale usually adopted by astronomers, A$_{e\ell}$ = log ...
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### Is there light on the surface of Venus?

A simple question: is there light on the surface of Venus?
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### Mass of sun's core

It is estimated that the sun's core is about 1/5 of the radius of the sun (from Wikipedia). I know that the density of the plasma increases substantially the near the center, and that the volume of ...
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### Is it accurate to say that we have a gravitational attraction towards all objects in the known universe?

Its probably small, but is there a theoretical gravitational attraction between all objects in the universe? Light can move pretty far, so does that mean gravity can as well, and is the gravity ...
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### What is the angular diameter of Earth as seen from the Moon?

...today I must have left my brain home. I know it's a simple calculation but I keep failing simplest calculations today. What is the angular diameter of Earth as seen from the surface of the Moon?
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### Do we get any benefit from being in a galaxy?

If our solar system were to somehow be created outside of a galaxy as a single star in the vast nothingness between galaxies, would life on Earth change any? Does being a member of a galaxy actually ...
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### How did the Mars satellites “take cover” from the recent comet flyby?

After comet Sliding Spring's Oct. 19, 2014 close flyby of Mars, NASA reports that All three NASA orbiters around Mars confirmed their healthy status Sunday after each took shelter behind Mars ...
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### How near to Earth do comets pass?

Siding Spring now passes about 10 Earth diameters away from Mars. What are the estimates of how often comets fly by Earth at different distances? Are the distances to some famous historical comets ...
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### Diameter of any galaxy

I've been trying to figure out how to find the diameter in kpc of any galaxy given that one knows the distance to it in Mpc (d) and also the angular diameter/size (A) in arcsec. I had a formula before ...
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### What would be the dynamics of a double-planet system, similar to Earth / Moon, but with both bodies nearly Earth-sized?

Researching a sci-fi story involving a "twin-planet" system. Is such an arrangement (however unlikely) physically possible? And if so, must they be tidally locked with each other, similar to the moon, ...
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### Do all stars have an oort cloud or is it a rare occurance?

Do all stars have an oort cloud like ours that will be filled with comets and other objects? If not, why are they not around every star?
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### Star class according to initial mass

Studying the stars classes for my homework (school) i learned that stars are classified by the spectral types (Harvard) and luminosity class (MKK) .. So the sun is a star class ...
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### How much would you weigh if Earth stopped orbiting the Sun?

I have a curious question. The reason why astronauts are weightless in space is because they are orbiting Earth. If they suddenly stopped orbiting they would fall directly into Earth. Earth is doing ...
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### Is early life required for life?

I was watching the new Cosmos and Neil DeGrasse Tyson said something that made me go hmmm... He mentioned that the only reason that the Earth did not experience the runaway greenhouse effect like ...
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### Planets and Pluto? Neptune?

If one of the rules to be a planet is that it needs to clear ALL objects from their orbit, does this also make Neptune a non-planet? Since it has thus far failed to clear Pluto (and based on an answer ...
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### What is the correct ratio of Newtonian to General Relativistic gravitational effects for Sun + single planet orbital system

For a hypothetical orbital system (Sun + single planet) the Newtonian model and the General Relativity (GR) model produce different expressions for the gravitational effect of the Sun on the planet. ...
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### How will they mine asteroids? [migrated]

Say we find an asteroid that is rich in ores and we would like to mine that asteroid. How could this be done? The gravity on an asteroid is so minimal that pushing a drill into the asteroid would ...
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### why do we look at dark energy as an energy?

We call dark matter dark matter, because of the way it acts on galaxies, but why do we look at dark energy as an energy? With $E = m c^2$, can't dark energy be mass as well? Why dont we look at dark ...
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### Could dark matter be considered a medium?

Long ago, it was theorized that light had to travel through a medium, until the particle/wave duality of light was discovered. Then it changed to the idea that light can travel through the vacuum of ...
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### Time period in which a planet rotates

I notice that Wikipedia give two contradictory terms for the time period in which a planet rotates in relation to an infinitely-distant object. In one place this is called a "sidereal day" and in ...
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### Mapping selenographic coordinates onto a sphere

I have a 3D rendering of the moon, which is represented as a sphere with a radius of N pixels. I also have selenographic coordinates. For example, the coordinates of the Apollo 11 landing site are ...
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### Evolution of Life

Since life evolved here on Earth does that mean that life had to have existed before or in the future elsewhere in the Universe or could it be a one time only freak accident ?
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### A question about stellar magnitude and the pogson's equation

Well surely the eye has different sensitivity to various wavelengths... will the pogson's equation not be affected if say I compare Betelgeuse and Rigel( both having a marked difference in spectral ...
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### Are epicycles and mean Earth/Sun actually useful astrophysical concepts?

Copernicus put the Sun in the center of the Solar system. This turns the Moon's orbit into an epicycle around Earth orbit. And the Jovian moons (later discovered) have orbits which are epicycles ...
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In a star, the fact that not all the hydrogen is used up, not all the helium is used up etc. is a little counterintuitive. Shouldn't it be that a star looses the hydrogen layer passively, in other ...
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### How can a planet not rotate at all and yet have 1 year that is day and 1 year that is night?

A mercury day if you consider its solar day is 2 mercury years. Now if you consider just 1 half of mercury, in 1 of those years it is facing towards the sun and in another one of those years it is ...
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### What happens if gravity shuts down for only one second?

Question has it all.What happens if total gravitational force in the universe shuts down for only one second?
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### Binary star not exceeding Roche Lobe?

Is it possible that a binary star doesn't exceed its Roche lobe and so when the second star becomes a red giant, instead of accreting some of its plasma onto the white dwarf that it becomes a white ...
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### Why does iron consume more energy in the fusion process than it produces?

I understand that once a star starts fusing iron, it's doomed to collapse because iron fusion requires more energy than it releases in the process, allowing the opposing gravity of the star to cause ...
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### what is a MIA satellite

I came across this sentence in a magazine: We sit outside the Lorne Community Hall, Victoria, watching the MIA satellite overhead. I wonder if the author is talking about an artificial ...
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### Is Mars expected to go through the tail of Comet Siding?

This question will likely be answered "in retrospect" in about 8 days. So it's a great opportunity to "lay it out there" and then let reality prove you right/wrong. On the 19th of October, Comet ...
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### Why objects are uniquely defined by their right ascention and declination?

I've just started studiyng Astronomy. I understood how I would measure Right Ascention and Declination: for the first one I'd trace an Hour cirlce to the Celestial Equator, and then, compute the ...
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### Detecting Deep Impact

There have been several accounts in media articles of asteroid near misses, many describe that the asteroid was not seen before the near miss. After reading the question and answer to How can we tell ...
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### Fate of the Universe

Which scenario will be worse for the ultimate fate of the Universe , forever expanding or the "Big Crunch" ? Will the Universe be destroyed in both scenarios ? At the present time does it appear that ...
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### Why didn't Johannes Kepler use data about more planets?

In Astronomia Nova (1609) Johannes Kepler used observations of Mars in order to refute circular orbits. Throughout Astronomia Nova he hardly even mentions other planets than Mars, Earth and the Sun ...
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### Is the whole universe is rotating on an axis?

Most of the celestial bodies we know are rotating or spinning on its axis.Is there any chance for the universe to rotate on its axis?
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### Question about the Sun's Motion

My name is Chris, I am a junior and I'm taking an Astronomy class in my high school. For a homework assignment, I have to explain how the Sun would move across the sky from September 1st through ...
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### Compute the colour in the AB photometric system

I have a question for homework and don't get it at all: Consider two filters as shown in the figure below. Compute the colour S1 - S2 in the AB system for a star with flux: where is a constant ...
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### Can Hubble red shift be interpreted as time dilation?

Can we interpret the de Sitter universe as a spherical cosmic horizon null surface of finite radius, centered at Earth, and containing the Hubble volume of space where time is dilated and radial ...
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### Is Earth's orbital eccentricity enough to cause even minor seasons, without axial tilt?

I was reading the answers to this question about an exoplanet having seasons without axial tilt, and several responders mention that orbital eccentricity could cause a similar effect, but that the ...
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### Time dilation at the Big Bang [duplicate]

At the time the Big Bang happened the matter had enormous density. According the GR (I may be wrong here) such density dilates time. If so, could it be that the time periods just after Big Bang which ...
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### Why Earth's perihelion occurs 3rd January rather than 1st?

Why Earth's perihelion occurs 3rd January rather than 1st January? Is there any effort to correct this discrepancy?
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### Is there a theoretical limit on telescope's resolution?

Is there a theoretical limit on what we can see with a telescope of fixed size based on Earth's orbit or the Moon, that is in Earth's region of Solar system outside the Earth's atmosphere? Why not ...
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### Does cosmological horizon grow or decrease as it radiates?

Black holes decrease as they evaporate and their radius decreases as well. So what is with a cosmological horizon? If cosmological horizon is just a black hole centered at the opposite side of the ...