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### What is the reason for high lithium concentrations in Sun-like stars?

In reading the European Space Organisation paper Lithium depletion in solar-like stars: no planet connection (Baumann et al. 2010), several conclusions based on their observations include: Lithium ...
108 views
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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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### Could a space radio telescope fill multiple purposes?

Dream for a while and imagine that there will be a flagship+ mission within a decade to put a large radio telescope in space: What kind of different tasks could the same radio equipment feasibly be ...
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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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### 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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### Where did this famous Planetary Precession Formula come from?

The following equation (which I shall term the Planetary Precession Formula, PPF for short) famously appeared in a 1915 publication by Einstein where he indicated how it could be derived from his ...
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### Calculate telescope orientation based on RA, DEC and Lat/Long

I'm parsing FITS files for a project based on data from a telescope. These files include 'DEC', 'RA' and lat long values. I understand roughly the concept of celestial coordinates and I assume that ...
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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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### 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 ...
30 views

### 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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### 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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### Could supermassive black holes form in dwarf galaxies?

Supermassive black holes often exist in large galaxies (e.g. the Milky Way, Andromeda). They make up a fair portion of the galaxy's mass. Is it possible for a supermassive black hole to form in a ...
103 views

### time on earth compared to completely stationary in space

I recently started trying to understand the theory of relativity and I have the following question. Because earth is orbiting the sun at approx 67,000 mph (and its my understanding time slows down ...
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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 ...