Questions tagged [night-sky]
Questions regarding the visible night sky during nighttime from Earth.
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What exactly is the "paradox" in Olber's Paradox?
To the extent of my understanding, Olber’s paradox states that if the universe was static and homogeneous, we should see a star at every point in the night sky and therefore the night sky should be ...
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How does the Moon move in the "night" sky as seen from the poles?
A photo in the NYTimes article Ice Surveys and Neckties at Dinner: Here’s Life at an Arctic Outpost has got me thinking.
During the winter months at either the north or south pole, when it is ...
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How will planets behave in the night sky as seen by Mars colonists?
Certainly among the first colonists on Mars there will be a few people interested in Astronomy enough to enjoy the night sky.
For them, familliar Mars will be missing and there will be a new, ...
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What is this rapidly twinkling red, blue, and white star I saw?
Last night, I was on my balcony at 1AM (PST) and I looked up and saw two stars near the horizon (I'd guess ~30 degrees above the horizon), and they were "twinkling" about twice as fast as other stars ...
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How to make a star chart from entries in a Bright Star Catalogue?
I know very little in astronomy, but I want to use the data in a Bright Star Catalogue to create star map projections for a specific time and place.
For example one line is
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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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Why does the Milky Way appear to form an arch shape across the sky?
The Milky Way galaxy is disc-shaped and Earth is in its plane:
(source)
In the following image, the Milky Way appears form an arch shape across the sky:
(source)
This looks like an out of plane view ...
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What would go into the design of a simple sky quality meter, used to measure night sky brightness?
@MCG's answer mentions several methods to classify night sky quality or brightness, and goes on to say:
Additionally, you could always purchase a SQM (Sky quality meter) which is a small, portable ...
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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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Are the stars distributed in uniform distribution, on the celestial dome, with respect to brightness?
Has there ever been a statistical analysis of the distribution of stars in the sky (on the surface of the celestial dome), by brightness? I want to know if they are uniformly distributed.
For example, ...
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How much clearer are stars in earths orbit?
As a child I remember my parents taking camping in California, and upon stepping out of the car I was awestruck at how thick the Milky Way galaxy was and at the number of stars everywhere. I've always ...
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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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Perceiving movement of stars
Are there any stars visible to the naked eye whose position, over a normal human lifetime, can be seen to have changed (relative to other stars in the vicinity)?
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In what parts of the world is it impossible to view the night sky due to light pollution?
Growing up far from any city, I have always been able to view the full night sky. It was just the way how things were. Of course, I knew that light pollution is a thing, and that the sky is a lot less ...
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My local night sky is so bright that I can only see the Moon, so would a low-cost telescope be any use?
Light pollution is so bad near our home that we can't see anything other the Moon in the night sky. For instance there is a street light on all night right in our lane and there are many other housing ...
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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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Is there a star everywhere you look?
What % of the sky is occupied?
Intuitively, when you look up at night most of the sky is black "space". Of course, our eyes are not very sensitive, so that's a dubious measurement.
Imagine ...
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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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Where can I find a visible star dataset?
I'm trying to do a project for a databases class where I have a user enter their current location and I tell them what constellations/planets/etc are visible in their area. I've seen this data ...
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Star map - finding stars
Assume you are given a star map that doesn't have the name of the stars on it. You know the latitude, longitude of the observer and the local time (year, month, day, local time). How could I proceed ...
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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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Which kinds of astronomical observations most need to avoid the Moon being up?
This comment to Did nobody in the Astronomy community think 12,000 new satellites in LEO might be a problem? links to Phys.org's New ESO study evaluates impact of satellite constellations on ...
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How much light would be reflected from Jupiter to Europa (in Europas night)?
Suppose Europa is found habitable and humans start living on it. Europa is close to Jupiter and during the night Jupiter would be reflecting light to Europa, just like our full moon reflects light to ...
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I'd like to photograph NEOWISE from Los Angeles, what is the optimal time?
I live in Los Angeles and have a camera adapter for my telescope -- nothing fancy just an Astromaster 114. What is the optimal time, in terms of dark sky and bright comet, to take a photo of Comet ...
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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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Planets visible at night
Stars give off light and are visible at nighttime but Planets do not give off light . So why are Planets visible at nighttime ?
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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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How can we see Venus at night? [closed]
According to the Globe Earth Theory, the Sun is in the middle of the Solar System and the Earth is the 3rd planet from the Sun, making Mercury and Venus between Earth and the Sun. If this is true, ...
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Encode place and date in star pattern
Disclaimer: I'm an astronomy noob
You sometimes see in (B?) movies, that they infer dates from sky patterns.
I was asking myself if you can encode a place and date in a mostly meaningful pattern? ...
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Throughout the year, are all parts of the night sky visible from any given point on Earth?
Or are there points on Earth where certain parts of the 360° night sky are never visible throughout the whole year?
Depending on the answer to this question, are there points on Earth where parts ...
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How to make projection from altitude and azimuth to screen with screen coordinate system?
Thanks to @ohoh for helped translate ra and dec into alt and az. Now that I have this data(altitude and azimuth), how can I plot it in something like this, with the coordinate system going like this?
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