Questions tagged [solar-system]
Questions regarding the Sun and objects orbiting it.
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The Solar System formation
I've recently watched one conversation (I won't post a link since the conversation is not in english) involving a physicist (at least he claims so), who spoke about probabilistic estimates of the ...
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Largest body in the solar system that a baseball thrown by a professional pitcher could escape
What is the largest (most massive) known body in the solar system that a professional pitcher could throw a baseball off of, i.e. that has an escape velocity lower than ~102 MPH? (45.33 m/s)
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Is the angle of the Earth's orbit on the Galactic plane changing (towards 180 degrees)? [duplicate]
Currently the angle of Earth's orbit is aroun 60 degrees on the Galactic plane. But is this angle changing?
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Precision in the measurement of the distance to the Sun
How precisely can the distance to the Sun be measured? Wikipedia says the distance to the Moon can be measured upto millimeter precision. But Wikipedia article on distance to the Sun says only about ...
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If the hypothetical planet beyond the Kuiper belt exists, is it likely there are even more planets farther outside?
Since 2016 there are hints that a (probably) ice giant planet may exist far beyond the Kuiper belt. There are speculations that it may be a rogue planet captured by the Sun. But is it likely that ...
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What is happening with these solar particles detected near the Sun that is so newsworthy?
Phys.org's Team identifies low-energy solar particles from beyond Earth near the Sun links to the open access ApJ article Properties of Suprathermal-through-energetic He Ions Associated with Stream ...
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What does the Sun look like from Eris at its aphelion?
At its aphelion (most distant location from the Sun) the outermost-known planet Eris is about 100 times as far from the Sun as Earth. What does the Sun look like from Eris' surface? Is there still a ...
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Peculiar Amplitude of Earth's Orbit in Z Axis
I'm currently building an N-body simulator for my masters project and I'm using JPL's Horizons system to compare against.
I started with just a couple orbits and everything seemed to be working ...
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How was the Messenger spacecraft used to measure Mercury's orbital precession to such accuracy? Could this have been done using radar?
This comment under an answer to Path of Mercury and general relativity mentions that the Messenger spacecraft was used to measure the precession of Mercury's orbit to such accuracy that the tiny ...
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How is the Gould Belt younger than the sun?
Our sun is located in the Gould Belt, a group of stars which is thought to be 30 - 50 million years old. However, the sun formed 4.6 billion years ago.
Did the belt form around us?
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Is there any planet or satellite in the solar system in the process of getting tidally locked?
According to
Tidal locking
The effect arises between two bodies when their gravitational
interaction slows a body's rotation until it becomes tidally locked.
Over many millions of years, the ...
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Who first named the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn? [duplicate]
Who first named the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn?
Agnes Clerke's Catholic Encyclopedia article "Astronomy in the Bible" § Planets claims that "Venus and Saturn are the only ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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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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
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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 ...
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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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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, ...
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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 ...
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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) ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Does plasma recombination in the solar wind happen to any significant or measurable degree?
Comments below this answer to Why does the Solar Wind consist of charged particles? have led me to ask the following:
Question: Does plasma recombination in the solar wind happen to any significant ...
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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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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 ...
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1answer
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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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1answer
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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!
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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.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1answer
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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
199 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 ...
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123 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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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
