Questions tagged [night-sky]
Questions regarding the visible night sky during nighttime from Earth.
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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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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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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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How does the Astronomical Twilight depend on the night length or the day length?
Some references say that the Astronomical Twilight starts at the last 1/8th of the night length, so it is long in Winter and short in Summer;
But by using the 18 angle (sun elevation below the ...
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How to create 3D animation of particles position vs time in python?
I am trying to make a 3-D animation of stars' position vs time. I have the information of the stars' x, y and z co-ordinates over time. I was looking at the example of Matplotlib and did understood ...
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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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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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Brightness, altitude & azimuth for satellites?
I'm using the heavens-above website to identify a satellite I've seen several nights this week.
The question is related to how I can search the satellites table with the information I can provide.
...
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Identify moving object in the sky at night?
Last night in the Carribean, I was looking at the sky at about 8PM EST, and I noticed this really tiny object moving pretty fast from left to right, just between the two stars in the photo. It's very ...
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Moving objects in the sky tonight 27th March 2020 [duplicate]
Multiple moving objects not in a line. The are staggered single line and in groups of two or three. One or two moved downward. They had a dim light orangey colour.
It was not obvious that these ...
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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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Is there a place where one can see the beginning of the universe? [duplicate]
If the night sky Is dark because we’re seeing the world as it was a long time ago, when there wasn’t much to see, is there a place on the universe where we can see the universe at the beginning of ...
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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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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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Any night sky image databases
I was wondering if there were any available databases for photos of the night sky. It doesn't have to feature pictures of any particular star, just has to be a large collection of photos from the ...
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Sky from Equator at 8,000 years Before Present?
The Stellarium software allows future views of the sky. I need an online resource (planetarium projector?) that shows pre-historical views, and from the Equator at 8,000 years before the present.
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Why do I see rainbows around the moon?
Regularly, I see rainbows around the moon. Here is approximately what I see:
Right at the edge of the moon, I see a bright blue ring of light. Further out, I see an inner rainbow. This is not as ...
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What's the white glow around this star?
A few days ago, I took a photo of the night sky in the mountains of Georgia with my DSLR. There, I noticed that one single star (in the center of the part of the photo that I added below) looks very ...
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How to see Comet 46P/Wirtanen?
I've got a Celestron Astromaster 114 telescope. I live in Los Angeles and would like to get a look at 46P/Wirtanen. Can anyone tell me when this comet is going to brightest and how best to locate it ...
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What would the night sky look like from a planet at the centre of a ring galaxy?
If there were an observer on a planet in the centre of a ring galaxy (omitting the galactic core) what could they expect to see in their night sky? I am currently under the impression that their night ...
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What would our night sky look like if the solar system was 100 light years from the centre of the Milky Way
When we look at photo's of the centre of the Milky Way, it looks extremely bright due to the concentraion of star systems...
If our solar system was only 100 light years from the centre of the Galaxy,...
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Comparing accuracy in Starry Night and Alcyone Software
From what I understand,
Starry night (https://starrynight.com/starry-night-7-professional-astronomy-telescope-control-software.html) is more focussed on simulating the night sky whereas
Alcyone (...
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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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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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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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Orange light in sky
It is 1:15 am, 8/10/18 in Indiana. I looked out my kitchen window and saw an orange light to the north with the color of a street light but clearly out in space. It was about as high as a full moon ...
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Is the dot on the photo - Mars?
The below photos were taken yesterday (August 4, 2018) at about 10 p.m. from the plane over the Black Sea.
We were seeing the light dot on the left for at least 10-20 minutes. It looked like a bright ...
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Why does in-the-sky.org say that Mercury is not visible from Taipei these days?
I know that viewing Mercury is a challenge, but I'm fairly close to the equator and Mercury was at greatest elongation just a week ago.
In-the-sky.org says:
All around the world, Mercury is visible ...
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App that shows what's passing in sky?
I'm not an astronomer but I enjoy looking up at the sky.
So tonight I saw something moving in the sky. It looked like a star, and it was definitely not a plane (I checked in flightradar).
Is there ...
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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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Best locations for large telescopes at high northern latitudes
Large optical telescopes want to be located at high altitude (get above as much of the atmosphere as possible). I get the impression that there is also a preference for low latitude (see as much of ...
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Brightest star visible from Italy and Argentina
A friend of mine tends to ask crazy question about everything. Today he ask me what is the brightest star that is visible on both the hemisphere and in particular from Italy and Argentina. I tried to ...
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Mars night sky -- Phobos and Deimos?
I'm having a debate about how bright Martian nights would be, in terms of both the sky itself and ground illumination. This answer seems to indicate that the stars would be only dimly visible, and ...
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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 did the night sky look like 100,000 years ago?
Question in the title. Would any constellations be identifiable?
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Creating planispheres from the perspective of nearby objects
I'm attempting to create a set of [reasonably] astronomically accurate planispheres from the perspective of observers positioned at the north or south poles of various nearby celestial objects. So ...
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Stars in multiple constellations
Are there examples of single stars that are a part of multiple constellations? What about stars that are part of one Western constellation and one non-Western?
Thanks in advance!
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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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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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Is there a Free repository of pictures taken everyday of the night sky?
I'd like to know if there's a repository out there of pictures taken everyday of the night sky. Not looking forward to anything fancy. Maybe a group of people out there have set up something out of ...
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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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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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Is there an example of a star that is already dead, but can still be seen on Earth?
While looking up at the stars I wondered, what are the odds that some of them are already dead. I did some research and found a very interesting article here. It states that the odds are rather small, ...
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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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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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