Questions tagged [solar-system]
Questions regarding the Sun and objects orbiting it.
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How could we detect if Venus or mars were being terraformed by aliens? [closed]
If any other body in our solar system was being terraformed by aliens, what would be the ways in which we would detect this?
Initially I thought of Venus or mars but I guess this could extend to any ...
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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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Can it be possible to get ice from other moons?
Could it be possible to send out something similar to a probe to one of the moons in the solar system that most likely have water under the cover of the ice and then bring back tests to Earth to see ...
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What would our Sun look like from other solar systems?
I came across an article that shows how the Sun looks from other planets of our solar system.
Now I am wondering, how does our Sun look from an exoplanet? I am guessing it must be looking like a 'star'...
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What (if any) role did Earth play in the evolution of the solar system?
We all know that Jupiter played a great role in the Solar System by cleaning up debris and dust from the Solar System, and deflecting asteroids. Saturn also played a similar role. Uranus and Neptune ...
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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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How to show that a complete revolution of Earth around the sun takes 365 1/4 days?
Seasons change regularly and day and nights also.
The fact that Earth takes 365 1/4 days to complete one complete revolution was found a long way back in history, but so far I can't find any current ...
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Are two definitions of a tropical year inequivalent?
Tropical, or solar year, which is 365.24219 days (a day being 86400 seconds) is defined in two ways (implying that they are equivalent):
Amount of time from vernal equinox to vernal equinox.
Amount ...
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What if the sun was replaced by Alpha Centauri? [closed]
What would happen if the sun suddenly got replaced with the entire Alpha Centauri system? Alpha Cen A will be in the sun’s position, with Alpha Cen B not too far off into the distance. How would this ...
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Tropical or sidereal orbital period when calculation Solar System positions?
I'm reading Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator Or Spreadsheet by Duffett-Smith and Zwart. When calculating the positions (in equatorial coordinates) of the Sun and planets the authors use the ...
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How many undiscovered planets might be in our solar system?
Some people talk about the possibility of a planet 9. Could there be a planet 10 or 11? How many undiscovered planets could there be in our solar system?
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Single axis solar tracker tilt angle calculation
I'm working on single axis solar tracker project. Solar panels will towards the sun with maximum angle from sunrise to sunset. the panel direction is east-west or near east-west. I need to make angle ...
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What are different forces acting on a planet which may be related to axial tilts?
In our solar system, we see that the axis of rotation of planets is tilted forex. The axial tilt of Venus is near 179 degrees. Venus, Uranus, and Pluto have large values of axial tilt(more than 90 ...
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Initial state for a 3-body problem to create Figure 8 [ restricted to 2D ]
I've made an n-body simulation solution using the naive algorithm of O(n^2) in my library ChelseaaJS.
I was trying to make some pleasing 3 Body simulations.
I wanna do the 8 figure thing.
I know it's ...
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Could a planet theoretically have a stable orbit between Venus and Earth OR Earth and Mars
Take a planet, identical to Earth in size, mass, gravity, rotation, etc.(but without the moon). Could this planet theoretically maintain a stable orbit for many hundreds of millions of years orbiting ...
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Are heavy elements equally distributed throughout the Solar System?
I want to know if heavy elements are distributed roughly evenly throughout the Solar System or if they are (excluding the Sun) concentrated mostly in a particular area, such as the inner part. Would ...
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Calculating net gravitational force on Uranus
I want to calculate the net/total gravitational force which is being exerted on the planet Uranus. There are many objects in our solar system like the Sun, other planets, moons of other planets, moons ...
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How scientists find the direction of rotation of planets?
How do we know that Mercury, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune rotate counterclockwise and Venus, Uranus, and Pluto rotate clockwise? How do scientists determine the direction of rotation of ...
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Besides Luna, are there any models of how moons become spherical and round?
Question
Given the theorized exceptional formation of Luna, (Giant-impact Hyphothesis, Wikipedia), are there any similar animated models of how the other, much smaller, moons in our solar system ...
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absolute magnitude of an asteroid
I've done some research and found that one could derive the absolute magnitude $H$ of an asteroid in the following way. $H$ is the brightness of the asteroid, observed on Earth, if the asteroid were ...
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Does the Sun shift periodically between prograde and retrograde rotation about its axis?
Prograde means rotating in the same direction in which most of the planets in our solar system rotate, which is counterclockwise, and retrograde rotation means the opposite, i.e., clockwise rotation.
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How to calculate absolute magnitude of planets?
Knowing:
Star's radius $r_s$ , luminosity $L_s$, and absolute magnitude $V$
Planet's radius $r_p$ , albedo $a$ , and distance $d_s$
How can you calculate the absolute magnitude of a planet in a ...
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Why do the Sun and gas planets rotate faster at equator than at poles?
From this site, it states that:
The Sun spins faster at its equator than at its poles.
I have also read somewhere that the gas giants (gaseous planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) also ...
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Does interplanetary magnetic field interact with the planet's own magnetic field?
The Wikipedia states on the page about the Interplanetary magnetic field that
The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), now more commonly referred to as the heliospheric magnetic field, is the ...
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Why does the axis tilt (obliquity) of Earth change over time?
I have recently learned that the polar axis of Earth moves in a complex fashion. There are both precession and nutation. I have learned that Earth's obliquity varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a ...
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At which point does the inner solar system end and the outer solar system start [duplicate]
I've heard how the inner solar system ends at the asteroid belt but where in the asteroid belt?The start?The middle?The end?Is there an exact distance that is put in place?
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Does the north pole of the Solar System (with respect to the invariable plane) point towards the galactic center?
How is our Solar System as a whole (not the wobbly Earth) tilted with respect to the invariable plane of the Milky Way?
I understand our Sun's north pole is largely pointing towards our direction of ...
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How it is not possible to say if Titius–Bode law is a "coincidence" or not?
From Wikipedia:
No solid theoretical explanation underlies the Titius–Bode law – but it is possible that, given a combination of orbital resonance and shortage of degrees of freedom, any stable ...
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Can gravitation waves break Solar System equilibrium?
Can gravitation waves, emited from black holes, break Solar System equilibrium and make a planet leave orbit or fall onto the Sun? And if it's probable can we measure this probability?
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Does the observed Perihelion precession of Mercury still deviate from prediction?
In Wikipedia section about the Perihelion precession of Mercury, we have the follwing table titled "Sources of the precession of perihelion for Mercury":
Amount (arcsec/Julian century)
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Nbody problem solving on python with Leapfrog
I am relatively new to astronomical programming and I am trying to code a simulation of the solar system as simplified as possible on python. To do so, I am using numpy in order to have one array ...
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What are the time periods of precession of equinoxes of other planets?
Earth has a time period of 26000 years approximately for precession of its equinoxes.
What are the time periods of precession of equinoxes of other planets?
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Angular velocity of planets around Earth, and Sun
What are the values of angular velocity of planets around Earth, and Sun? I am looking for these two sets of values.
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How to explain this elongation frequency diagram between the Sun and the Moon
Intrigued by my recent question about the average angular distance between the Sun and the Moon, I tried to inquire this little more in attempt to find the source of the asymmetry. Basically I have ...
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Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein; could it be a "planet-killer" and what could prevent it from getting close to us?
The huge "mega" comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) 80 miles wide is coming towards Earth from the edge of our Solar System.
It is supposed to only get to the middle of our Solar ...
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What is the average angular distance between the Sun and the Moon?
Naturally we would expect the average angular distance(*), to be exactly 90°, for although the Moon is not running in uniform speed (or rather, to be more precise, the relative angular speed of the ...
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How the "precession of the ecliptic" can be distinguished from the "precession of the equator"?
The precession of the equinoxes (AKA general precession) is composed from two components:
A dominate component which is caused by the the tilt of the Earth's axis - which is called "precession ...
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Is the solar system the only survivor of cosmic evolution? [closed]
A question has entered my mind, we know that all the phenomena in the universe are several thousand light years away from us, so the light we see from them is related to the past few years, now my ...
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Does the magnetosphere of Jupiter protect the Galilean Moons from solar flares?
Teasing out a sci-fi story and would like to get things right science-wise. Sun's about to flare (yes, I know we're not great at predicting that yet but near future) and Earth's doomed. Would the ...
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constant semi-major axes of the planets
in Numerical Expressions for Precession Formulae And Mean Elements for the Moon And the Planets (Simon et al., 1994), the orbital elements of the planets are given for long time durations.
The semi-...
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Planet's distance data from JPL Horizons - Mars Curiosity mission
I am looking for distance measurement in AU between planets and Earth.
E.g. For Mars, Current distance, or distance of Mars from Earth at any given datetime, along with minimum (closest approach), ...
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Is it possible that Planet 9 was thrown out of the Solar System? [duplicate]
Is it possible that this planet changed other planet orbits (from which we assume that it exists) but then was thrown out of the Solar System in past when Sun was close to some other star? And it ...
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Solar vs Planetary
Am I correct in thinking that although our solar system is a planetary system we are the only ‘solar system’ in our universe simply because of the name of our sun?
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Do Stars other than Sun, have its own solar system ? How different are those from our Solar system? [closed]
This will sound like a idiotic question so apologies if I make you want to roll your eyes but... so we look into our night sky and we see the stars, does each of the stars we see have their own ...
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How do we know that the planets of our solar system began their formation at more or less the same time?
A long time ago, when I had to help my children with their homeworks, I often had the vexing question « how do we know ? ». It is true that reading a middle-school science textbook is like reading ...
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Could or has a Ninth planet ever be "formed" in our solar system?
As I get along with the answers in my previous question, that planet formation depends on accumulation of planetesimals. So is there any chance that a planet nine would form or any of the Trans-...
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Which planet came first in our Solar system?
I always wonder which planet came first in our solar system? Sources suggest that Jupiter might be the first planet in our solar system, but how did our solar system evolve into an 8 planet system?
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How do the giant planets excite the orbits of asteroids?
The giant planets, particularly Jupiter, are notorious for bringing about changes in eccentricities and inclinations of smaller bodies(asteroids and KBOs). Jupiter, in fact, throws almost all the ...
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How do JWST and Hubble compare in detecting small bodies in the solar system that are a) white, b) black, c) Arrokoth-like, d) Voyager-like?
Assume the object is small, spherical, and illuminated only by the Sun, and has some apparent motion. The object is either:
a) white - reflecting 100% perfectly diffusely (assume low temperature)
b) ...
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If Planet 9 is a primordial black hole with a mass of 5 Earth, is it possible to detect it in a ground telescope? What should we seek in this case? [duplicate]
If planet 9 is not a planet but a black hole how can we find it? Can we see gravitational lense or infrared/gamma light?
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