# All Questions

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### What proportion of planetary systems have been found with 'Hot Jupiters'

According to the NASA website "The strange attraction of Hot Jupiters", one of the main types of exoplanets that have been detected are Hot Jupiters, which are These are behemoth worlds that ...
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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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### How to complete the Hipparcos Catalog?

I've downloaded hipparcos catalog from the Strasbourg Universe but whilst there is a lot of information, I can't find the names of the stars that the HipID relates to. There is the wikipedia page ...
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### How Are Radioactive Decay Rates Influenced by Neutrinos - On Earth and Other Dense Planets

I read a science report recently that mentioned an accidental discovery where radioactive decay rates shifted slightly slower in advance ( about a day and a half) of solar storms or in sync with sun's ...
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### Do objects look larger the further away they are, beyond z=1?

I stumbled upon this text which illustrates and says: We find that as the object is moved to higher redshifts its angular size first decreases (as naively expected) but soon begins to increase ...
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### Retrograde motion and Kuiper Belt Objects

As seen from Earth, planets such as Mars and Jupiter exhibit retrograde motion when they are near opposition (from Earth). I am wondering how this effect extends to very distant objects, such as ...
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### What does it mean to say 'space exists?'

From another question I posted, I learned that not only was matter created from the Big Bang, but more importantly, space itself. What does it mean for space to be created? Does it exist in the same ...
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### Theoretical limits for natural satellites having natural satellites

Is there an inherent instability or limit that prevents natural satellites like the moons of Jupiter from having their own natural satellites? I looked at other questions such as do moons have moons ...
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### What is the direction of the dark energy force on gravitational rotation curve of galaxies?

Is the direction of this force is like gravity (to the center of mass) or orbiting objects' direction of movement?
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### What “revolutionary” discoveries were made by Hubble Telescope [on hold]

Forgive me for the naive question. Besides taking pictures of tons of objects in space, what kinds of revolutionary discoveries were made as a result of data from Hubble? Did Hubble shed light on any ...
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### Layout of the universe

I've been working on a space game in my spare time, and lately I've been thinking on how to lay out the universe. Though I've searched around and found it hard to get a good view of what the universe ...
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### Calculating 2004 BL86 position using software

Is it possible to view asteroid 2004 BL86 using Stellarium or the iOS Star Walk app?
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### Is there any planet/star bigger than VY Canis Majoris?

Compared to VY Canis Majoris, our Sun is more like a speck of space dust. Is there any planet or star which is known to us that is bigger than the VY Canis Majoris?
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### Why can't we observe the Oort cloud with a telescope?

The Oort cloud is a hypothetical structure based on our observation of long-period comets. There are currently proposals to design probes to confirm the existence of the Oort cloud. Now, sending a ...
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### Is it difficult to see DSO in your eyepiece?

I want to know if bringing the image of a DSO in eyepiece generally represents a problem for beginners in astronomy.
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### Planetary orientation calculator

Can anyone recommend a website or a program that reliably calculates orientation of a planet (e.g. Mercury). I.e. I need to find the subsolar point [SSP] longitude knowing datetime. I have found ...
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### the initial astrometry calibration for a telescope

Generally a telescope can memorize how to point to a target with a particular RA&Dec. There is no need to calibrate every day. How can it happen? How to let the telescope(non-amateur) know the ...
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### How do stars or galaxies get their spin?

It is my understanding that when a star, a planetary disk, or a galaxy forms, the rotational momentum of the whole system is conserved. Due to the smaller size of the resulting object, it will spin ...
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### How do scientists determine the age of stars?

I was Googling about the oldest galaxies in the Universe. Everywhere is written that their age is known by the light. Referring to this line "Since light travels at a set speed, if you look at a star ...
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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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### how far away could we detect that earth has life?

My guess is that life bearing planets are too far apart to be detected. I think we can only find the ones within a sphere around our planet that is 100s of light years in diameter but I suspect life ...
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### Is there a cosmic, rather than technological, upper limit to what a telescope can resolve?

Space radio interferometers could have a baseline of millions of kilometers, but is there a point where a larger baseline doesn't improve the resolution anymore because the photons observed are ...
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### The destruction of the Universe by a bubble

So I was watching a documentary on television about this and a number of theories that are proposed as to what the fate of the Universe will be: "Big Crunch" "Big Freeze" "Big Rip" I understand ...
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### Can there be a 2nd possibility deduced from the fact that galaxies are moving away from us?

I just read that according to the BBT the universe is expanding. This is evident from the fact that distant stars (and galaxies) are moving away from us. But it could also happen that the universe is ...
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### Instrumental magnitude to “real” magnitude - Photometry with not enough data?

I have a lot of data taken in R, B, V, Luminance and Halpha-bands which I want to analyse photometrically (one target in the frame). The frames are already reduced (with flats, darks etc.) and have a ...
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### What is the explanation for rapid inflation just after the big bang?

I often hear about cosmic inflation occurring rapidly after the Big Bang, but have never came across any explanation for it. What supposedly caused this inflationary period in the early universe? ...
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### Alt-Az or Polar?

I have a Meade wedge that I am to install on one of their LX200 telescopes. Will I be able to align in alt-az afterwards? Is polar easier or harder to make an alignment? Any other tips welcome. Thanks ...
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### What are the azimuths of the planets' orbits?

I am creating a virtual solar system model and I want it to be as realistic as possible (e.g. orbits are ellipses, not circles, and orbits are oriented correctly, not all coplanar). In order for me ...
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### How many observations does it take to determine the orbit of a TNO

Several observations of a distant solar object must be taken before determining its orbit, but in the case of objects discovered beyond Neptune's orbit, just how many are required over what period of ...
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### Given a date obtain latitude and longitude where is the sun zenith

Searching is easy to find terminator line (frontier between day and night) or the position of the sun in the sky given a position on the earth and a time; but I can't find how to obtain where is the ...
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### Leonid meteor showers and the Tempel-Tuttle comet

I've been reading about the Leonid meteor showers and am struggling to understand one piece of information. On Wikipedia (Tempel-Tuttle), it states: The orbit of 55P/Tempel–Tuttle intersects that ...
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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 ...
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### Do we know the exact spot where big bang took place?

If you rewind the universe back 14,7 billion years, all matter were in one spot, and then started expanding. Do we know where this is in reference to our own solar system? And is there anything there? ...
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### Why don't we orbit the center of our galaxy?

At the center of the milky way, there must be some giant mass that keeps the galaxy from just floating away from itself. So, obviously, we feel the immense gravitational pull of whatever this is. But, ...
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### What will New Horizons be able to say about a magnetic field at Pluto?

Does NASA's New Horizons flyby probe to Pluto have instruments to measure Pluto's (or Charon's) magnetic field, if any? I'm a bit confused by the Wikipedia article which says that New Horizons, ...
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### Why are explosions always used to represent the Big Bang?

In documentaries the Big Bang is often represented as blackness followed by a big explosion with loud noises. This always feels cheap and falling short of explaining the origin of the Universe. Is ...
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### Tide on the Moon

If the Earth's Moon had a water ocean of depth 2-4 Km, how high would the tides rise due to the Earth's gravity? (Just a hypothetical question.)
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### What is a possible software for simulating binary star systems?

I would like to define both initial velocities and masses of components so that orbits may be either elliptical of hyperbolic. Is there any software to make such simulation? Unfortunately, Binary ...
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### How do we know an event is a gamma-ray burst?

How do we know an event is a gamma-ray burst (grb)? There are two kinds of grbs, long burst and shot burst, which are caused by supernova explosions explosion and the merger of two neutron stars, ...
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### Why can't I see Mars clearly?

I just bought my first telescope - a Celestron CDC 1100. It came with a 40mm lens so with a primary focal length of 2800mm the power should be 70x. My problem is that I've looked at Sirius and Mars ...
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### PowerSeeker 114Q

I just purchased a powerseeker 114q by Celestron. This is my very first telescope. I believe I assembled it correctly however I can't see anything out of it. Well I can see a small corner of an image. ...
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### How to find RA 0

I am standing in an open area and can see the sky for a full 360 degrees. I have the coordinates of an object (RA and DEC). Where do I look to find RA 0?
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### What's special about Saturn that it has distinctive rings?

This may overlap with other questions, but I'm asking what is unique about Saturn in location, properties, etc that is has far more pronounced rings? It's between Jupiter and Uranus and Neptune in ...
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### Alien Planet habitable or not? [migrated]

So an amazing thing happens and we locate an Earth like Planet and we also achieve the technology that enables us to travel there. Upon arrival we discover that dinosaurs are roaming on the entire ...
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### Why do we need to add a second to 30 June and risk upsetting Internet?

We linked a physical constant (the time of one second) to a physical non constant (the rotation of the earth) so there will have to be adjustments - or not? Is it important that the UTC in one line on ...
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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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### Is there a star simulation software that can handle mass ejections and supernovae?

I use MESA right now to play around with stellar dynamics, but it can't do mass ejections and therefore, I can't think of a way to let the simulated stars explode as supernovae. What simulation ...
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### Why is iron responsible for causing a supernova?

Why is the element iron responsible for supernova? Can any star create more element than iron within the span of its life? I understand that when star dies due to supernova, other elements are ...