# All Questions

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### What is the cause of the variation from high and low mean obliquity periods of Mars?

It is reasonably well known that Mars has a greater obliquity range than Earth, due to Mars lacking a stabilising influence of a large moon. However, the Martian obliquity seems to have gone through ...
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### Where can I learn these Astrophysical techniques? [Read below]

Whenever I read any Astro papers in http://arxiv.org/ they usually talk about Data fitting or modelling or sentences like 'we fitted the spectral region by analytic functions i.e. by multi-component ...
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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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### How tall are the “fractured” linear structures on Europa's surface?

What are the altitude differences in the high resolution part of this image of Europa? How high do those ridges rise over their neighboring valleys? And how large is the area shown in this image? ...
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### What are the last images from the Galileo orbiter before impacting Jupiter?

NASA's Galileo orbiter at Jupiter ended its mission in 2003 by intentionally dive into the gas planet. Did it take and transmit any close up images before it ceased to function? If not, why? Are there ...
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### How do you calculate the effects of precession on elliptical orbits?

Kepler's first law states that planets (and all celestial bodies orbiting another body) travel in elliptical orbits, which have well-known formulas that make it relatively easy to calculate 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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### Is the location that published calendars use to calculate the seasons one specific location on the earth?

All the calendars in my house say the fall equinox is Tuesday the 23rd. All the astronomical programs and astronomical sources say it is it is Monday the 22nd in Ohio. Since the time given is 10:29 ...
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### Is the moon moving further away from Earth and closer to the Sun? Why?

According to The NASA Moon Facts page: The moon is actually moving away from earth at a rate of 1.5 inches per year. Why is the moon moving further away from the Earth? Is this a result of the ...
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### Hulse Taylor Binary Pulsar - How is “Cumulative Periastron Time shift” calculated?

Following on from a previous question about the interesting Hulse Taylor Binary Pulsar. BACKGROUD Weisberg & Taylor, 2004 present a graph showing the change in "Cumulative Periastron Time Shift" ...
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### speed of light measurement

While searching for different methods of speed of light measurement, i came across one of the method of fizeau discussed below which i cannot fully understand. In short,in Fizeau’s apparatus, a beam ...
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### Why does the face of the moon 'sync' with the earth? [duplicate]

We never see the dark side of the moon. It rotates so that the same side always faces us. I heard two (dinner party) theories on this: 1. The moon was made by smashing out a chunk of the earth, and ...
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### How likely and severe is the threat of a gamma ray burst to earth?

In the National Geographic article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090403-gamma-ray-extinction_2.html it is suggested that a gamma ray burst likely caused a mass extinction in earth's ...
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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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### How is the maximum density in a circumstellar disk determined?

I'm working with some equations to model the evolution of a circumstellar disk. One of the equations is $$\rho(r)=Ce^{-\frac{(r-r_{peak})^2}{2 \sigma ^2}}$$ where $\rho$ is density, $r$ is the ...
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### Effect of the absence of atmospheric refraction to sun rise and sunset times

What is the effect of absence of atmospheric refraction on sin rise and sunset time? Is it will be delayed or earlier for sunrise and sunset, and why? Thank you:)
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### How does this strategy for chasing the sunset work?

In Randall Munroe's What If? blog he tackles this question: What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved ...
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### What range of exit pupils work for observing the full moon?

I'm observing the full moon, from a major city, with heavy light pollution and dust. The objective size is fixed, for this comparison, something between 4 and 6 inches. The question is about the ...
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### What is a low mass Black Hole?

Is a Low Mass Black Hole also called a Stellar Mass Black Hole? Can Low Mass BH be also called Primordial BH? (If low mass BH are Stellar Mass BH-What is their size in terms of the mass of the sun?)
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### What current evidence is there that disproves the Big Bang Theory? [closed]

(this comment added here from Hello, November 25/2014 WHEW! didn't know there'd be such a reaction) The Big Bang Theory has been described as follows: "Somewhere between 10 and 20 billion years ...
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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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### 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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### How does 67P rotate?

What can be said about 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko axial tilt? Is it fixed (if so, at what value), only changing with precession (at what rate?) or does 67P "tumble" with axial tilt changing over time? ...
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I'd like to one day take the Astronomy Olympiad, however I'm at a loss to know where to begin. As it currently stands I have no experience whatsoever with Astronomy. If there are people here with some ...
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### can we see all binary stars as pairs?

As it is obvious from the question title is there any restriction or cases that we can see the binary stars as not in pairs also is there any binary stars doesn't linked together by gravity ? I ...
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### Very bright star in the east at northern hemisphere. What is it?

From some time now (few weeks as far as I can remember), there is a very bright star in the eastern sky. I first thought it was Venus, but according to this link, Venus is in the western sky and ...
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### Roche Limit for Earth-like body around Earth-like body

In a discussion elsewhere about binary planets, it came the question. How near can a planet like Earth (maybe Earth itself) be to another planet like Earth before both of them tearing apart due to ...
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### moonless night and lunar phase

How to define moonless night? There is no moon at all during some night? How to calculate and know whether the moon would appear during one night? If the lunar phase is full moon, is it possible ...
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### How to determine what the unseen object is if a white dwarf is orbiting it?

Imagine you observe a 1M white dwarf orbiting an unseen object with P = 0.02 years and a a = 0.2AU. What is the unseen object? Why? (your explanation should include a calculation)
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### How can there be anything “beyond” the CMB?

Two things we take, for this purpose, to be axiomatic: The CMB is the oldest thing we can observe directly The cosmological red shift tells us how "old" something we are observing is Yet we also ...
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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 (xf).When I start the outward integration however i have to use a ...
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### Energetics of Titans Tholin haze

So, I've googled and wiki'd on this, but no clue, so I turn my question to the community: Given Titan's nice orange haze that is supposedly composed of Tholins and strangely coincides with its ...
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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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### Determining Distances in Space

I suspect the scope of this question may be to broad, but: what are some methods for determining distances between two objects in Space? Please present the methods in historical order, so as to make ...
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### Why does Earth enjoy a significantly longer time as a habitable planet as compared to Mars or Venus?

On a related note, why didn't Venus remain habitable for longer than it did? Is the current hypothesis as to the time when Venus's atmosphere became hostile and what event triggered it, proven true?
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### Appearance (frequency) ranking of stars?

Is there some ranking / statistics that shows how common given type of celestial objects is? A table that would allow the answers to questions like: What type of star is most common per volume of our ...
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### Why does a particle feel no force at radii greater than itself?

I am working through Liddle's "An Introduction to Modern Cosmology", and in a newtonian derivation of the Friedman equation he states: in a spherically symmetric distribution of matter, a particle ...
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### Declination and Ascension - the Sun and Andromeda

If Andromeda is overhead at midnight, what is the right ascension of the sun? (andromeda is ar RA =1hr, Dec = +40). I thought I understood what Dec and RA were, but I can't think of how to start this ...
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### Yellow object between δ Ori and η Ori

Can someone perhaps assist me in identifying the yellow object between δ Ori and η Ori? I took an image of this object, but I can't identify it. It can be seen on the image below, hosted on the Eagle ...
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### Standard practices and models for generating the ephemerides of the solar system

I am familiar with the theory on generating the positions of the members of the solar system, but have been unable to find out the standard practices and methods of professional astronomers in ...
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### Is there a general term for epicycles, deferents, and eccentrics in Ptolemaic astronomy?

According to Ptolemy's (c. 150 CE) account of the motions of planets, planets moved in circular paths ("epicycles") around center points that in turn moved around the center of the earth along a path ...
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### How to find Schwarzchild radius and and parsec help?

I don't understand how to do this problem. I have been stuck on it for an hour! The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is about $4 ×10^6 \text{ M}$ in mass. What is its ...
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### Is axial tilt direction correlated with semi-major axis direction?

Earth comes closest to the Sun every year around January 3. Winter solstice is at 21-22 December, merely some 12-13 days away. That means projection of Earth rotation axis onto the plane of its ...
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### Appropriate battery for overnight viewing to drive telescope and GOTO?

I have a Plettstone 18" Dobsonian telescope with GOTO and clock drive that runs off a 12 volt cigarette lighter adapter. What is an appropriate battery to use to run this overnight while viewing all ...
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### As of now did a radio telescope ever recorded something else than the silence of space? [closed]

When a radio telescope listen to the Universe; a constant sound is recorded. Is it the noise "of the mic" : interferences? Scientists says that when they will notice variations on this basic constant ...
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### How do I calculate the positions of objects in orbit?

In a model of the solar system, given the Sun is at the point $(0, 0, 0)$, an given the six orbital elements for each object in orbit ($a$, $\epsilon$, $i$, $\Omega$, $\omega$, $M_0$), how can I ...
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### Humans surviving in space [closed]

To my (admittedly limited) understanding a human being in outer space wouldn't last very long, mainly due to three factors: the extreme cold the intense radiation and the vacuum of space So if my ...
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### Exercise: 2D orbital mechanics simulation (python)

Just a little disclaimer beforehand: I have never studied astronomy or any exact sciences for that matter (not even IT), so I am trying to fill this gap by self-education. Astronomy is one of the ...