# All Questions

2k views

### Does the Earth have another moon?

I was just wondering what are the chances that there is a small object (say less than 1 km but more than few meters) that orbits the Earth but has remained undetected by us? Are we actually ...
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### stellar evolution fortran code-runge kutta mass step from center to fitting point

I am trying to integrate the four stellar model equations from the core to a fitting point and from the surface to the fitting point ($x_f$). When I start the outward integration, however, I have to ...
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### Stable polar solar orbit with the Earth continuously observable

Is there a stable polar solar orbit such that the Earth is always in view and not eclipsed by the Sun?
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### Hamiltonian of general three body problem

i try to extend my analysis from planar restricted three body problem to the general one. Is there anyone that can help me to find out the Hamiltonian for this prolem in cartesian coordinates? I ...
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### What determines the configuration of orbits in a binary system?

There are essentially two configurations of orbits a system with two bodies can have: A configuration where the paths do not cross: A configuation where the paths cross: Note: Size of the ...
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### If the moon wasn't receding from Earth, what would be the impact on the weather and tides?

Moon is slowly receding from Earth, which means that after its formation it was much closer to the Earth than now. How would weather look like if it wasn't receding at it would be now as close as at ...
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### Smallest body that can be observed from Earth?

What is the minimum size of an object that can be observed from Earth with our most powerful telescope? I understand that the answer depends on how far the object is from Earth. For the sake of ...
231 views

### How do you define the diameter of the Sun

That is, it's twice the radius where the radius is from the centre of the sun to some edge. But what is that edge?
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### Likelihood of a stable system with a dwarf planet's orbit inside that of a gas giant

I keep thinking of various planetary system configurations, and would like to know: What are the fundamental references based on Monte Carlo long-term simulation of planetary systems' evolution that ...
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### What practical considerations are there for amateur observations of transiting exoplanets?

Obviously, I am not referring to actual viewing of the exoplanets themselves, but detecting their effects on the brightness of the light emitted from the parent star (as in the diagram below from The ...
44 views

### Look up current positions and velocities of solar system objects

I am working on an orbital dynamics code and, for fun, I would like to model the Sun-Earth-Moon system with my code. I can look up the masses of each object just fine, as well as average distances ...
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### Is there anywhere I can find some kind of database on all known stars and their properties (mass, surface temperature, radius, and luminosity)?

I have been looking for some kind of collection of all known stars and their individual respective mass/radius/temperature/and luminosity, can you link me to one if it exists? My goal is to write an ...
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### What is the orbit of Earth around the Sun?

According to wikipedia and other sources, a planet and a star always move in a circular orbit around the common center of mass of the both bodies, in case of Earth and sun, this center of mass lies ...
148 views

### Why Jupiter's Great Red Spot is Reddish?

The Great Red Spot is a persistent anticyclonic storm, 22° south of Jupiter's equator, but why is it reddish? From Wikipedia: It is not known exactly what causes the Great Red Spot's reddish ...
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### How would vehicles travel through the interstellar medium with its such low density?

I've heard from a number of different places that the density in the interstellar medium can have an average of 1 atom per centimeter cubed. Perhaps I have a wrong understanding of what 'nothing' is ...
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### 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 often and over what period is Earth’s rotation averaged to compute UT1?

I understand that UT1 (and for that matter UT0, UT2, etc.) are based on averages of actual earth rotation, and serve as a form of mean solar time. However it’s not clear to me when these averages are ...
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### Data for Sun's Orbit

The planets generally kindof orbit around the sun, but a more precise statement is that the planets and the sun all orbit around a common barycenter. Because the sun is so massive, this barycenter is ...
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### Accretion disks - why are they disk-shaped, rather than spherical?

So, the theory (briefly) about accretion disks is that stuff falling into the black hole will most likely not fall straight into it but will miss it and go into orbit, perhaps for a long time, perhaps ...
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### Are there ways other than the collapse of a star which have been observed to form black holes?

Every time I hear about a black hole, it's always in conjunction with the collapse of a star. Have any other processes been observed to create a black hole?
3k views

### Is Jupiter made entirely out of gas?

I heard that Jupiter is made out of gas. But in school I learned that Jupiter has gravity which is 2.5 times that of Earth (Gravity that can tear apart a comet) and gravity is proportional to mass. ...
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### What would happen if an ice cube is left in space?

Recently I boarded a flight and noticed Outside air temperature as -53°C at an altitude of 36860ft(11.23km). I don't know what causes such a freezing temperature in that altitude but was wondering ...
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### What could be the results from the next test at CERN? [migrated]

How possible is it that CERN's Large Hadron Collider, on its second try, could disrupt the gravity of Earth?
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### Method to determine the amount of reflected starlight necessary for an exoplanet to be visible from a given distance/angle?

What is the method to determine the amount of reflected starlight necessary for an exoplanet to be visible from a given distance/angle? (Not from occlusion but actually visible on its own.) Further, ...
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### Can an observer on Earth only see half of the sky?

Is this the following statement true? An observer on earth only may see half of sky from the northern or southern hemisphere, and even if the observer stands on the equator on top of a very high ...
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### Orbital elements: Difference between longitude of perihelion and argument of perifocus

I am learning orbital elements and one thing isn't clear to me. When I look at the Horizon's ephemeris data for Mars, this gives me argument of perifocus equal to roughly 286.53 degrees on epoch ...
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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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### Where does the solar system end?

This is a question I've heard many times in the past, and a quick search of the site says it hasn't been asked here, so I figured I might as well ask (and answer) it. I know that it is rare for ...
28 views

### Is it possible to steer the sight of a Liquid Mirror Telescope using a plain mirror scheme? If yes, why hasn't it been done?

I have read about Liquid Mirror Telescopes in a number of places, and according to these sources, a major disadvantage of these telescopes is that they can only "see" straight up. In a nutshell, the ...
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### Solar System' formation, considering its and universe's age

It's been said that the sun has 4.6 billion years, and the complete solar system to have similar age. The star-class of the sun seems to be quite common. Stars of its class can have 8 or 9 billion ...
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### How long do planetary rings last?

I'm surprised that this question hasn't been asked before (here or on Physics), to the best of my knowledge. It's one that I might have asked when I was a bit younger, and one that I think other ...
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### Does planets repel

I know gravity is resultant of mass. Gravity is nothing but the attraction force on the body resulted due to its mass. I have a question may be silly but like in magnetism we have attraction and ...
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### Manned journey to Mars [migrated]

Will we be able to take the amount of water that will be needed for this 18 month trip or will they have to recycle the water that they take with them ? I imagine that this will be quite a challenge ...
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### How often do stars pass close (~1ly) to the Sun?

Interstellar exchange of massive objects is difficult across several light years. But as the stars orbit the galaxy the distances between them change. I don't find data for neighbor star distances ...
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### Does Tobler's First Law of Geography Apply to Star Composition?

There is a principle in Geography called Tobler's First Law of Geography which states that "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Does this ...
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### Why are stars so far apart?

So, this is mere musing, but it seems that stars are quite extremely far apart. I tried to determine the mean distance between nearest neighbors for stars (in just our galaxy) but I'm not sure what it ...
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### Could a theoretical cube shaped planet have a moon? [migrated]

I'm inventing a constructed world for a personal exercise in writing, and I was wondering if a theoretical cube shaped planet could have a moon. Is that physically possible? I am going on the ...
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### What is the line of light in galaxy cluster MACS J1206?

I noticed this in a thread from world building, what is the continuous line of light in MACS J1206 slightly right of center in this picture? The only thing I could think of would be the side view of a ...
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### Why, in the Solar System, all the mass seems to be concentrated at the centre?

Is this a consequence of planet formation in accretion disks ?
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### Calculate Distance To Stars

I was just watching a lecture from Carl Sagan. He talked about figuring out the distance to the stars; it got me interested in learning more about the subject. As far as I know, the Inverse square ...
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### How would an exoplanet be found from earth if our view of its star system is “from the top”?

When we find an exoplanet by observing the dimming of its parent star, this means that the planet passes in front of the star from our view. What if our view of a star system is from its "top" or ...
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### How many earth-like planets do we know at this moment?

Well, the title says everything... How many earth-like planets have we discovered out there? Discard too big (made of gas), too cold, too hot, etc. Consider earth-like sun distance, size, temperature, ...
134 views

### Why don't small stars end up as a black holes?

I've recently done some research about black holes, and I realized that big stars form black holes and small ones don't. Is it because the gravity isn't strong enough for it to fall in on itself, or ...
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### What would happen if we put a small part of White Dwarf or Neutron Star on Earth?

I would know what would happen if we put a small part (let me assume 1 cm$^3$) of White Dwarf or Neutron Star on ...
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### where is the boundary between dark night and grey night

Is there a clear cut between them? How long and how bright will the moon be for a dark night? I googled but could not find a definition for them. People just talk about them empirically?
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### Deriving Dark Matter; specifically looking for a table of stellar rotational speed versus distance from center of galaxy to derive dark matter

I'm trying to find some data that I can use to derive dark matter (in a loosey-goosey sort of way, I won't be too rigorous). I'm helping a friend out with a final project for his astronomy course and ...
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### Where can I find the image of MY Camelopardalis?

In this news article,it says The image captured by the telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in southern Spain, reveal the physical properties of each of the stars including temperature and shape. ...
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### How does radio bandwidth restrict the choice and use of science payload on interplanetary probes?

I asked a question here about returning to Earth a physical memory capsule along with soil samples, as a complement to radio operations as today. This might return a much larger amount of data ...