Questions tagged [solar-system]
Questions regarding the Sun and objects orbiting it.
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How much mass did the Late Heavy Bombardment add to Mars?
How much mass was deposited on a terrestrial planet during the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB)?
Is it possible to estimate a reasonable interval, specifically, for Mars?
Could the mass addition to Mars ...
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Why did the dust between the planets disappear during the birth of the solar system?
I'm catching up on my childhood mistakes. One of them was the "nuclear flash", the enormous explosion when the sun ignited. Apparently, this did not happen as the ignition of the sun was a ...
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How to plot right ascension with time of the retrograde motion of mars? [closed]
Measure the right ascension, declination of mars and sun. plot the variation of right ascension with time.
user52968
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How did the temperature of the solar system evolve?
As a child, I've read that stars ignite during a so-called "nuclear flash". I understood this as a very violent outburst of energy from the sun, causing all dust between the protoplanets to ...
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Calculating the absolute magnitude of a solar system body
I am trying to calculate the absolute magnitude of a solar system object, given its albedo, and assuming all of its luminosity comes from reflecting light from the sun. Using $L_{sun}$ = solar ...
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Solar system datasets for exoplanet analogs?
Are there data from the solar system available, that are about quantities we regularly investigate in exoplanet searches?
The only collection I know of comes from this paper: "A Catalog of ...
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Is the largest black hole larger than the Solar System?
Yes. Ton-618 is the largest black hole, and if it was replaced with our solar system, it would reach far after the end of the solar system, which is called the Kuiper Belt. Ton-618 has a mass 66 ...
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The Poynting Robertson Effect
In the Poynting Robertson effect, it says in general, the Poynting Robertson effect is caused by the fact that objects like dust re-emit the light they absorb. Is that correct? Is this effect weak? ...
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How is a Planet's Moment of Inertia Measured Remotely?
In the July 2023 issue of Sky & Telescope there is an article titled Sights Set on Uranus. In that article the following statement is made:
Since the 1930's we've suspected that Uranus and ...
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Have gas or dust or rock accumulated in our solar system on its 20 orbits around the Milky Way?
Also,does the absence of the accumulation of anything large such as rogue planets by the solar system suggest the Milky Way has been orderly and stable for billions of years?
user52681
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Does the Oort cloud have any large holes in it and if not does this mean nothing large has entered the solar system for a long time?
Would holes in the Oort cloud be a record of what has passed through it?
user52681
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What's the reason for the hollow region in Oort cloud?
Can someone please tell what caused the hollow space (pointed by yellow arrow) in the Oort Cloud?
I understand that it is called cloud because the cluster of objects does not align with the major ...
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How was this image of the faculae in the Occator crater obtained?
The picture in question (that I'm asking about) is at the bottom, of this post. Now, did they simply take a picture with reduced light intake? If so how much? 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 or less? Or did they ...
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Difference in results between JPL Horizons and cspice (rust-spice)
I am calculating the apparent planetary position of planets using the cspice library (I am specifically using rust-spice, which is a wrapper of cspice in Rust).
when I calculate the same values in the ...
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derivation of reduced magnitude of asteroids
I've noticed that there is this parameter called reduced absolute magnitude $V(\alpha)$ and it is defined as below according to the paper by Mahlke et al. 2021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2020....
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Does the Oort Cloud lose mass with time?
Can blocks of ice escape from the Oort cloud and away from the solar system forever?
user52488
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Motion of solar system around Milky Way
As our solar system performs its +-230 million year lap around the Milky Way, is the orientation of the ecliptic plane preserved independent of the center of our galaxy, or does the plane perserve its ...
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Why is Mercury's orbit so unusual?
Mercury's orbit has the most eccentricity, 0.2, of all the planets. And this orbit is also the most inclined relative to Earth, 7 degrees. Edit: And to the invariable plane, it is inclined 6.35 ...
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A solar system of solar systems
The moon orbits Earth, earth orbits Sol. It's true that Sol orbits the galactic center, but that's not what this question is about.
Is it possible for a solar system like the Sol system, along with at ...
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Does the Sun have different unique orbits around barycenters?
After reading this question and seeing its image I thought about this question I'm going to publish.
Does the Sun have different unique orbits around the barycenter for its multiple planets?
If yes, ...
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Cooling the early earth
My son had this theory that the icy comets cooled the hot earth during the late heavy bombardment. What do we know about this cooling effect on the early evolution of the earth? He intended his theory ...
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What secondary and tertiary conclusions can be drawn from the temperature characteristics of lunar soil sent by ISRO Chandrayaan 3?
ISRO Chandrayaan 3 released the following data today about the temperature characteristics of lunar soil.
What secondary and tertiary conclusions can be drawn it?
More specifically, what may be the ...
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What determines the edge/boundary of a star system?
According to Education.nationalgeographic, "A star system is a group of planets, meteors, or other objects that orbit a large star. While there are many star systems, including at least 200 ...
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Are the rotational axes of Earth and Mars parallel?
So I was stuck on a question involving the transformation of coordinates from geocentric to Mars-centric coordinates. The relative position of Mars and its orbital details are given. I thought that we ...
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What is the "structure" of the Solar System while traveling through Space?
On the Image above, the arrows pointing upwards depict Solar System's travel direction. The arrows pointing to the right show its own direction of rotation and the direction of the planets within it ...
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What would happen if Venus and Earth collided?
The first thing we would need to consider is that Earth has already been hit by a protoplanet half its size 4.5 billion years ago, meaning the Earth may have a chance of staying intact after the ...
user51331
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Are dust-dust collisions necessary to explain Kordylewski clouds at Earth-Moon L4/5? Aren't the cross-sections, number density timescales too small?
The recent question Can dark matter accumulate at Lagrange points? mentions Kordylewski clouds and that article begins:
Kordylewski clouds are large concentrations of dust that exist at the L4 and L5 ...
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Why does the tropical year have a ~161 years cycle?
Using PyEphem, I calculated the time difference between consecutive summer solstices in the south hemisphere for the last 4000 years, and plotted them in a graph. It seems like random noise around the ...
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Did liquid helium help the solar system to form by cooling the nebula that collapsed to form it?
Was the gas cloud that collapsed to form the solar system cooled by liquid helium at some point in time? I ask because the Cosmic microwave background had a temperature around 3K when the solar system ...
user50918
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Where can I get raw photos of planets clicked by HST, Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini for Saturn and Galileo for Jupiter?
I intend to process RAW images of planets clicked by HST,Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini and Gallileo spacecrafts using a few softwares.
I am in search of where I can get these raw images from.
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Conditions on Earth when Mars was warmer, wetter & had a thicker atmosphere
To the question, What part of a star's habitable zone has the best chance of developing life?, I made the following comment:
It's always intrigued me as to why some people have thought that life in ...
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Why do planets in our solar system have different chemical compositions? [duplicate]
Was this caused by turbulence in the disc that went on to form the solar system or was the disc itself just endowed with an uneven distribution of elements?
user50623
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Can gravitational waves cause a large asymmetric planet to spin?
As planets orbit Earth it won't be perfectly spherical because of gravity But can gravitational waves make the asymmetrical Earth spin a little?
user50623
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How to calculate solar ecliptic longitude
I would like to write a small script to calculate solar ecliptic longitude in relation to different locations and dates. For instance UTC + - 1...2 etc..
I know, solar ecliptic longitude is the ...
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How certain is the Sun's classification?
Curious Question here.
How do we know the Sun is a G-Type Star?
Our sun (Classed as G2V) apparently lies around the 5,780 Kelvin. Yet NASA generalizes it as 6,000 K- and is apparently white even ...
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Do the inner-Earth planets actually align with the constellations we see?
For example, because the Sun is the center of the solar system; when we think that the Sun is on the constellation of Aries, in actuality, isn't Earth lining up with the constellation opposite Aries: ...
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Outer Limit of Oort Cloud
In most popular astronomy articles I see the Oort Cloud described as having a radius of about two light years. Is there any firm basis for this or is it merely a guess?
If it is that big, and Alpha ...
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Protoplanetary disk luminosity - looking for a sanity check please
I've been told to "consider an Earth-mass of interplanetary grains (roughly spherical with a radius of a few microns) in a protoplanetary disk. Let the particles be in a torus with a cross-...
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Periodic motions that affect earth axis tilt
It is said that the earth axis changes its tilt with a period of 41 000 years. So used the image
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Obliquity_berger_0_to_1000000.png
removed the grid ...
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Was the recent blue spiral over Hawaii really a SpaceX rocket dumping fuel?
Is the observed phenomenon really consistent with a SpaceX rocket dumping fuel or decelerating or something? I'm skeptical. There are several things to discuss.
The speed of the blue spiral is much ...
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Is the solar system barycenter affecting the Earth weather?
I do not have the numbers but I guess the solar system barycenter should move much more than the Earth radius, and if that is correct then it should not be affecting the Earth's temperature.
I mean, ...
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Orbital decay of the sun's orbit around Sgr A*: is it likely?
What are the possibilities of the sun orbiting the black hole Sagittarius A* at a very close distance? Is there anything that could possibly alter the solar system's orbit, bringing it much closer to ...
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Different results for the same JPL Horizons query
On JPL Horizons website, I'm using the following query to get vector state for Earth:
...
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How to get the right ascension of the Moon?
Is there any approximate way to calculate the right ascension of the Moon? I already got declination but still, need the right ascension to calculate the final position of the moon. Thanks for all ...
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Would the influence of a black hole nearby cause a tilt of 63° of our solar system in relation to our galaxy?
I am trying to understand the influence of black holes and the tilts of solar systems on their axial plane In relation to the plane of their host galaxies.
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Where was the solar system born? Alternatively, how far back in time can we retrodict the location of the solar system?
I have two related questions:
Where in the Milky Way did the solar system form? Is there a particular nebula it can be traced to?
How far back in time can we track the location of the solar system ...
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What is approximate numerical equation of the apsidal precession of the Earth-Moon barycenter?
What is approximate numerical equation of the apsidal precession of the Earth-Moon barycenter? Or is it only constant 11.45 arcsec/year with unchanged accuracy to 0.01 arcsec/year for a million years?...
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Do conjunctions of planets block out the sun and cause measurable cooling of the atmosphere on one of the planets?
Is a significant amount of light energy blocked by one planet such that there is noticeable cooling of the atmosphere of another?
user48394
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First time mention of coplanarity between Solar Systems planets
When comparing Galileo, Copernicus and Hypathia models to describe the solar system, each of them agree on coplanarity, based on their representations. Anyways, it was not until Kepler and Newton that ...
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Could we detect the light of cities at night in other solar systems?
Would it be possible to see electric lights on distant planets using current telescopes?
user48394