Questions tagged [solar-system]
Questions regarding the Sun and objects orbiting it.
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Is there a verification of the solar system barycenter as it is theoretically determined?
The barycenter of our solar system is not the sun, but a changeable location outside of the center point of the sun. A often used diagram of that relation is shown below, originated from the Wikipedia ...
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2answers
106 views
Where can I find Helium 3 in our solar system?
What are the best locations within the solar system to find Helium 3 excluding the Sun? Where is Helium 3 most abundant after the Sun?
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X-rays, Solar wind and Sun's corona
I was reading that Solar corona emits the solar wind however also X-rays. What is the difference during the creation of these effects and impacts on our atmosphere?
Thank you!
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1answer
34 views
For any given meteor shower in a given year (e.g. Quadrantids, now) where can I see a rough prediction of how many days it will last?
For a given shower the rate hitting the Earth's atmosphere versus time is usually a peak with a width of a few days, though there are some exceptional unicors.
Is there a place where I can view this ...
3
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1answer
53 views
What is the current angle of motion of the sun with respect to the Galactic Plane?
I understand that the solar system oscillates in its motion around the Milky Way. However at any given time, there must be a specific angle between the current direction of the solar apex and the ...
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2answers
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Visibility of a planet on the other side of the Sun
Context: I've been having a discussion with my vectors and mechanics professor (course Mathematics BSc) about a problem on a recent coursework. The following is the model I came up with. I'm not an ...
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35 views
Skyfield Subpoint() usage
Is subpoint() in skyfield used for finding subsolar point?, i cant find examples in this link subpoint. How can i use it to find ...
2
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0answers
49 views
Does the axis of solar system precess during it's motion in the Milky way galaxy?
The plane of solar system makes an angle of 60° with the plane of galaxy. So, the axis of solar system should make 30° angle with the galactic plane. Like the axis of Earth precess over a long period, ...
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0answers
21 views
What is the typical chemical composition of the most common asteroid types?
I'm trying to make a semi-scientific accurate game where you can find/mine asteroids. I want the composition of asteroids, and how common they are to be correct. Or at least as close to correct as ...
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1answer
45 views
What's the difference between semi-major axis and apoapsis?
The semi-major axis is half of the diameter of the major axis of an ellipse by definition. So how does that make it any different from apoapsis, the furthest point an object is from a parent body in ...
1
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1answer
34 views
Delay of Moon passing a defined meridian each day
On the website Lunar Synodic Curve a nice image of an Moon analemma is shown together with an explantion on the reason why for the different phases of the Moon the images have to be taken with 24h ...
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1answer
101 views
Could Planet Nine be much smaller than thought previously?
In 2016, Caltech astronomers began testing a Planet Nine hypothesis to explain the eccentric and inclined orbits of distant dwarf planets such as Sedna, 2015 TG387, Niku, and 2012 VP113. The ...
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Why do CME's “zig-zag” on their way to Earth?
This answer states:
A single CME will impact a spacecraft from only one direction, but that direction might not be directly from the sun because a CME may zigzag en route.
Looking at that link, ...
4
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3answers
136 views
How long is the Sun closer to Earth then Mars is?
A recent question at Space.se has generated a few comments that are interesting.
But the answer to one particular comment to might address a lot of misconceptions.
I imagine the actual halfway ...
6
votes
2answers
123 views
what is the resolution of the magnitude that is distinguishable to the naked eye?
Or is it possible to spot the changing brightness (magnitude) of a planet with a naked eye
The context of the question is this: If I'm not mistaken Ptolemy was able to say (using observation alone) ...
5
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1answer
83 views
Can we use Breakthrough Starshot spacecraft to detect any unknown massive object in our solar system?
For example, the hypothetical Planet Nine.
Since we just want to prove or rule out the existence of Planet Nine in our solar system, we can avoid most of the technical challenges for StarChip (camera ...
3
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1answer
109 views
What is the distance between the solar systems towards the center of galaxy?
The distance from our Solar System to the nearest is roughly 260,000 AU. I am wondering what is the minimum distance between two Solar Systems. Since the center of our galaxy is supposed to be more ...
6
votes
1answer
3k views
Starting a fire in a cold planet that was full of flammable gas
What would happen to a cold planet that has a large amount of flammable gas, like Neptune, if we throw some fire into it? Will it burn, or would the flame be extinguished due to the cold?
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2answers
202 views
Can fish and other sea creatures survive in watery planets like Neptune or any other planets that has water?
I'm a bit curious since Neptune does not have a land surface and it is covered with water, I mean water has oxygen right? What will happen if we put some sea creatures in these watery planets? Can ...
3
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1answer
89 views
How was Cassini able to measure and use the Earth-Mars distance to get the Earth-Sun distance?
How was Cassini able to measure and use he distance between Earth and Mars to get the Earth-Sun distance? How were the ratios of Earth-Mars and Earth-Sun calculated then? Given Kepler's laws all we ...
5
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2answers
115 views
How would a small nearby black hole be detected and confirmed as such?
This article suggests that there might be a tennis ball-sized black hole orbiting the Sun somewhere beyond the orbit of Neptune. According to the article, observational anomalies of trans-Neptunian ...
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2answers
3k views
How do we know Nemesis is not a black hole (or neutron star)?
Nemesis, the hypothetical "death star", is supposed to be a massive body that orbits the Sun at long distances and periodically sends comets from the Oort Cloud into the inner solar system. These ...
2
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2answers
120 views
Estimate prevalence of ʻOumuamua-style interstellar obects inside Jupiter orbit now that C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) is found?
Now we know two of them, so maybe it's not an outlier.
We have two points so we can draw a line. How many similar macroscopic objects should be zipping through space at ~30 km/sec so that we would ...
3
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1answer
100 views
Where would an object fly to if it were to leave the gravitational field of Earth? And would it stop somewhere? What would happen to it?
My 3,5 year old son is asking :-) He can take answers for a 15 yo I think. Many thanks for your help!
2
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2answers
116 views
Are there any planets or objects orbiting in Goldilocks zone?
I was wondering whether there were any objects that orbit the "goldilocks zone" besides our home planet earth, and how the goldilocks zone of our solar system is defined.
5
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2answers
145 views
What is wrong with this measurement of the synodic period of Mercury?
I'm measuring the synodic period of Mercury using Stellarium. When measuring the synodic period one needs to choose a reference point to start the measurement, and I choose the point when Mercury is ...
5
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1answer
76 views
Textbook to explain measurements and calculations for heliocentric solar system
I'm trying to identify a textbook I had briefly and then lost. I had a PDF file of an astronomy textbook, but the hard drive crashed irreparably before I could thoroughly read the textbook, or even ...
4
votes
1answer
95 views
Are there any simulations of the Grand tack?
The BBC program with Brian Cox "The Planets" involved some description of the Grand Tack hypothesis to explain the current state of the solar system.
This theory has Jupiter wandering through the ...
6
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1answer
117 views
Planets positions (azimuth, altitude) API
I'm looking for a simple API that will allow me to get positions of planets and the moon for a given date, location and time.
Does anyone know an API like that?
Any suggestions or alternatives would ...
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1answer
195 views
View of other planets from the Earth
There appears to be varying positions/spots of view of other planets from Earth, if I'm not wrong. Now, given that all planets are on the same plane, why do their positions change on the night sky for ...
1
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1answer
120 views
How thick was Earth's primordial atmosphere?
Earth's first atmosphere was made of hydrogen and helium accumulated before fusion started in the Sun. As soon as this happened it was stripped away by the Sun. How many atm of hydrogen and helium had ...
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0answers
61 views
When was it realised that most major moons orbit in the equatorial plane of their parent planets?
Inspired by the discussion of the moons of Uranus providing a clue to the planet's axis of rotation in this question, I'm wondering when it was realised that the major satellites are typically located ...
3
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1answer
109 views
Tycho Brahe's model
Tycho Brahe made a model of universe where earth is at the centre and motionless whereas all other planet orbited around the sun.
I am interested to know how he came to this model? If it is because ...
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2answers
94 views
How young could the asteroid belt be?
I heard a theory (possibly from a crackpot) that there was an event in our solar system where two objects collided and created the asteroid belt, the orbits of some of the planets were altered, and ...
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1answer
146 views
How long would it take for a black hole the mass of our sun to swallow our solar system?
If a hypothetical black hole with the mass of our sun would appear in place of the sun.
How long would it take before our entire solar system (everything inside our heliosphere) to be swallowed by ...
4
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2answers
85 views
Any studies of the detection of dark matter in or near the solar system?
Has there been any theoretical or observational study of the possibility of detecting "local dark matter", either within the solar system or near the Sun in interstellar space?
If so, what methods ...
3
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2answers
356 views
What would happen if a Sun-like star were to consume a Jupiter-like planet?
A substantial number of discovered exoplanet systems are likely contain more than one gas giant with distances far closer to the star than in our solar system.
It is known that in solar system ...
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0answers
25 views
Why aren't globular clusters disk-shaped? [duplicate]
I thought that solar systems and galaxies are disk-shaped because that is the most stable shape under gravitation. Globular clusters are very old, often times older than their host galaxies, so why ...
3
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4answers
213 views
Could the solar system survive in a void?
If the solar system were suddenly placed in the middle of a large void... would everything still function as normal?
Would we even notice any difference here on Earth apart from the night sky?
......
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1answer
126 views
What keeps the planets of the solar system moving in their fixed orbits?
Models of the solar system show each planet moving around on its own orbit.
Is is really because of the Sun that every planets remains in its own fixed orbit?
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1answer
98 views
How to calculate the orientation of planets at current epoch
For an application I am working on I am creating a simulation of the solar system. In this simulation, a user needs to be able to 'move' to any position on any planet, and have the sky be accurately ...
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4answers
6k views
Why do things float in space, though the gravity of our star is always present? [closed]
In the solar system, things float around. We are so certain that the gravity of our sun exists. Still, why does that gravity not influence satellites and other objects there?
Our solar system is also ...
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1answer
1k views
Why didn't all the iron and heavier elements find their way to the center of the accretion disc in the early solar system?
I guess that's pretty much it. I just heard that that a meteor fragment was found to be solid iron and it just seems inexplicable that it was floating around.
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3answers
171 views
Origin of heavier elements on earth?
Earth is part of Solar system, which is said to have originated from condensation and mutual attraction in dense clouds of gasses and dust. If Sun is basically more than ninty percent hydrogen and ...
4
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1answer
47 views
How much difference did the supply of “fresh” r-process elements make to the Solar System.?
In one of the answers to this question @MartinKochanski made the interesting point that the abundance of elements heavier than iron (r-process elements) in the solar system is probably due to a fairly ...
5
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1answer
57 views
Can we detect the wobble of neighbouring stars around their barycenters?
The wobble of a star around its barycenter is interesting (the wobble caused by the pull of the rest of the solar-system on the sun).
This question explains why we don't see this wobble from within ...
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1answer
1k views
Are these real paths of planets as traced from Earth?
Few days a go, I came across these two pictures of paths of planets as observed from Earth. They have a perfect geometric shapes. Actually, to me they look so beautiful and perfect, that they appear ...
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1answer
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How would the combined masses of the Centaurs or the scattered disk compare to the combined mass of the asteroid belt?
I'm interested in finding the combined mass of the Centaurs and the scattered disk. I looked around but I wasn't able to find any estimates. This seems to suggest that either the combined masses of ...
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1answer
104 views
South of the tropics, where does the sun's noon shadow point?
If I understand correctly, in countries to the north of the tropics the sun's noon shadow points north.
What happens south of the tropics? Is it pointing south?
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1answer
2k views
If gravity precedes the formation of a solar system, where did the mass come from that caused the gravity?
In my class we are studying objects in our solar system and this question seemed to just pop up. And since I cannot answer this, I've been really frustrated for quite a while now and would like some ...
