Questions tagged [night-sky]
Questions regarding the visible night sky during nighttime from Earth.
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Identify the bright object to the left of the moon
I'm seeing the sky at 23:00 on September 29, 2023, from the east of Algeria's point of view. To the left of the moon, there is something very bright. I need to confirm if it's Jupiter?
(My camera ...
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Seen over 15 strange lights flying in a straight line [duplicate]
At about 9:30pm on 9/4/2023 in the Dayton Ohio area went out on the back porch and look in the sky and I noticed one light flying in a straight line across the sky and it was going at a fast speed and ...
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How much do the constellations change if the viewpoint moves within a solar system?
My question is pretty simple. How would the night sky change if you were in a different planet within the same solar system? Specifically the fixed stars. Would the constellations be essentially the ...
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What would the night sky look like after 200 years?
It is research for a book I am writing. The year is 2200. Assume the volume of items in orbit has increased dramatically from today’s numbers. We go to war and blowup all the satellites. Four hundred ...
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Sky surface brightness vs magnitude limit visibility
I am wondering how we can calculate the magnitude limit of the celestial object, which could be visible at the given sky surface brightness conditions.
We already know that Venus and Jupiter are ...
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If Earth's rotational speed is zero at the North Pole, why do stars still have apparent motion?
The apparent motion of stars (and other objects) results from Earth's spin on its axis, hence the rising and setting of some stars, and the circumpolar nature of others.
If the ground is not moving ...
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Sky density of milky-way stars vs external galaxies
I am interested to know if any particular slice of sky contains more galaxies or more stars (in the milky way, although would be interested to factor in extra-galactic stars, and even rogue planets)
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Names of the galactic backdrop
I am wondering what are the various names given to the plane of the milky way. I am looking for a specific one I once heard, and will likely recognise when I see it.
If I can explain better with a ...
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How many planets can be seen by the naked eye? [closed]
I can see Venus and Mars, what about the others?
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Do planetary hours have any real astronomical basis? [closed]
Planetary hours are an ancient theory that each of the 24*7 hours of the week is "ruled" by a certain celestial object in the solar system. Among other consequences, this theory gave rise to ...
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What were the two bright dots that showed up near Jupiter and vanished after seconds? [closed]
I saw two bright lights near Jupiter and I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t just an airplane. It had almost the same level of brightness as Jupiter, and I was wondering what it could be. Can anyone ...
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How do I know that I’ve found Neptune?
So, recently I went out for a look at Neptune with my telescope and I found the general area of where Neptune was. However, when I took a see for myself, there were a ton of blue stars everywhere and ...
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Will the stars dim in the future because of the expansion of the universe?
We know that the universe is expanding, and that means everything is spreading apart. So does that mean in the future all the stars will dim and eventually disappear in our night sky because of the ...
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What was this "light" that looked like a star moving repeating from point A to B for about 5 mins [duplicate]
I was looking in the sky one night about 9:45. There was what looked to be a shooting star but much slower and brighter more like a satellite. It was moving (from standing on earth) it looked like a ...
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What could be an explanation for a satellite-like moving light in the night sky that dims over time
Last night I saw a bright light moving across the sky. It was probably as bright (or even brighter) than some of the brightest visible stars like Vega and moving quite slowly (so no shooting star) at ...
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How bright would the night sky be in the galactic center?
Given that the star density within a parsec of the center of the Milky Way is about 10 million stars per cubic parsec, how bright would the night sky be if you were on a rocky planet within that ...
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How am I supposed to locate the planets Uranus and Neptune with a 70 mm f/5.7 refractor?
I can locate all of the planets other than Uranus and Neptune. This is mainly because they are very dim and I live where there is just enough light pollution so that I can't spot them. I have a Gysker ...
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What is this, red, blue, white twinkling, star? [duplicate]
I am from Germany and at 11 PM I was outside and I saw a star, rapidly twinkling in blue, red and white. At first, I thought it was a plane, but it didn't move.
I took a picture of it, but you can ...
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How to get high-quality sky image for specific location & date
I'm working on an ink drawing album cover inspired by this Frank Hurley photo from the First World War, and want to put an accurate starry sky behind it in my album artwork.:
The tower in the image ...
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Making an application to draw the night sky of other planets
I'm making an application for drawing a night sky of planets other than Earth. Ultimately my app may be used to draw a night skies of a hypothetical planets in other solar systems. I'm doing it ...
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What is Canopus in this picture?
Picture is taken from 34.2N 126.6E Bogil-do, South Korea. I suppose the dot at up-right side is Rigel and the bright white dot is Sirius, and bright reddish dot at the bottom is light from some ...
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looking for a plugin or API for Moon-phases and sky-map
I want to create a website that contains star maps and moon phases like mapiful and thatverynight but couldn't find any helpful APIs or plugins.
Can anyone help?
thanks
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Why does light pollution make the night sky completely black without stars?
I have seens pics of the night sky in areas that naturally have little population like deserts, cold regions and forests and the night sky is slighly bright and colored by shades of blue, red, purple ...
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How can we know if a star which is visible in our night sky goes supernova?
Let's say there is a star about 3000 light-years away from earth visible in our night sky. If this star were to go supernova tomorrow(not relative to earth's night sky), we would know about it 3000 ...
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What is use of Greek Letters in Astronomy? [closed]
We see letters such as $\epsilon$ or $\alpha$ or $\beta$ or $\eta$ etc... (possibly all Greek letters)
Can Somebody state the use of all Greek letters in astronomy?
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What are the aspects does the moon differs between cities located on the same latitude?
What are the aspects does the moon (astronomical position and other astronomical aspects) differs between cities located in the same latitude? - For example: Seattle, Munich, Vienna, and Ulaanbaator ...
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Star visibility above horizon map likewise day & light map or moonlight world map
I am looking for an option to present the given star visibility world map likewise day & night map or moonlight world map like below:
Question: Is it possible to generate a map like this for some ...
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Will Starlink deface the night sky?
There is some discussion (and there are some questions on this site) about the impact of Starlink on observational astronomy. I am not an astronomer, but I am amazed by the beauty an immensity of the ...
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Naked-eye limiting magnitude: mismatch between Wikipedia, online converter and Shaefer's formula
I'm trying to make sense of the difference between the reference Sky Quality Meter (SQM) readings given in the Wikipedia article on Bortle scale, online converters like [1] that are based on Shaefer's ...
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Will the night sky ever be more stars than darkness? [duplicate]
Given enough time, will enough light from distant stars reach Earth so that our night sky will be more than 50% stars?
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Density of stars on celestial sphere
The pattern of stars on the surface of the celestial sphere seems perceptually to have an universally looking structure. If you pick a region of the sky at random, for instance by using the (excellent)...
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Star Map Vs Star Catalogue vs Planetarium Software
What is the difference between a star map, star catalogue and the sky provided by planetarium software? I have read the wiki but was having a hard time understanding how the data, accuracy and detail ...
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How do I find out when a constellation reached its zenith?
I found this website to look at the sky at the specific time and location: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yoursky - you can insert latitude and longitude and time to see how the skies looked at any ...
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Is sky-glow affected by height?
I'm an architecture student and my graduation project will consist of building a research center for outer space, my question is whether or not height would affect sky-glow or not ? Thanks in advance, ...
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Is there a webpage that shows the night sky but can filter out dim stars?
This webpage is very good for viewing the night sky and learning the names of the stars
Timeanddate - Astronomy
However, it shows too many stars. Because I live in the city, I can only see about 50 ...
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What is the average luminance of the star background?
What is the luminance of the star background, i.e. of all the objects outside of the Solar system? E.g. if we measured average luminance of the sky from the far side of the Moon (so that solar and ...
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How can I see a star behind a mountain range? Do I move apart from it and up?
Could some explain what I need to do to see a star that, from my point of view, is behind a mountain:
Obviously, if it's one mountain, and not a very high one, I can just climb it to see what's ...
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Is there any scientific correlation between cold nights and star-lit skies?
I've many times heard expressions such "cold, starry nights". It's apparently poetic to describe star-lit night skies as being "cold".
Is this based on reality in some way? Is ...
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Why doesn't the night sky keep on getting brighter and brighter every day? [duplicate]
I think this should happen because of the below logic.
Consider Day 0 of planet earth. There is no light coming from any surrounding star that has reached our planet and hence its pitch dark.
On Day ...
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When I see Mars, I see only red light
I have a 700 mm focal and 76 mm aperture telescope. I bought it a few days ago. I tried to spot Mars for 3 days but I only see red light. I use an 20 mm eyepiece for finding it and 4 mm eyepiece for ...
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Did the night sky ever change in recorded history?
I wonder whether there has ever been a major change of the firmament in recorded history, like changes in the positions of stars, changes in constellations, or stars disappearing after going supernova....
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What inaccuracies are in this Stellarium depiction of the sky?
I found this depiction on Stellarium of the sky as seen from near the Apollo 12 landing site on January 11, 2131. The earth is the black circle in the arm of the Milky Way.
Here is a similar view ...
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Does the Sun and Moon basically appear to "move on the sky" identically regardless of location and date?
For a long time, I've been trying to use Stellarium (simulation) and many visualizations and animations in order to get a good idea of how the Sun and Moon move across the sky, as seen by a human from ...
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Historical Lunar Tables and the Associated Error Bound
Consider as an example, AstroPixel's ``Six Millennium Catalog of Phases of the Moon''---
http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phasescat.html
My question is two-fold:
How are these tables which ...
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How dark/bright are polar nights?
During the polar night directly at the pole the Sun sets once and—after a period of twilight—stays down for months at a time.
The only sources of non-human-made light are the stars, the auroras, and ...
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Right ascension, Equinox, Positions Help
I am trying to answer the following question which I slightly understand but need a clearer explanation:
What are the times of year to observe an object at X hours of RA at visual wavelength?
I am ...
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360 degree image of the whole sky
I look for an image that I know exists.
It is an image showing the whole sky, showing all stars and galaxies bright enough to be visible at the resolution, projected to the same shape that is commonly ...
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Events I cannot explain
In the last few days I experienced two events I cannot explain. I watch the sky since I was a child so I'm aware of most events like satellites, ISS, Iridium flares, etc...
First event
It was about 22:...
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Where should I be looking to see Neowise in southern Sweden?
I'm in the south of Sweden and just spent over an hour trying to find Neowise, but didn't see it. I live in a rural area, there are no lights nearby and there is a small hill with clear visibility ...
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Seeing comet NEOWISE?
Today the NY Times published an article that explained how to see NEOWISE at night.
The article explains it like this:
To catch NEOWISE yourself, look up at the northwest skies about an hour and a ...
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