# All Questions

7,239 questions
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### cosmic-microwave-background - 2.7 degrees but does the Big Bang care?

The Big Bang is a proposed answer to the beginning of the universe, and the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB is a central part of the evidence for it. Now suppose the measurement returned a ...
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### Why hasn't the Earth fallen into the sun yet?

So the Earth's been orbiting the sun in a relatively stable orbit for billions of years now. during that time, it's been plowing through dust, and hit by comets and asteroids, presumably mostly from ...
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### How can I get the fluxes of fetch_imaging_sample? - astroML

I'm working with astroML in Python and I need to get the fluxes from the magnitudes in r band of fetch_imaging_sample(). ...
85 views

### Why was helium hydride (HeH+) the universe's first molecule?

The abstract of the new Nature paper Astrophysical detection of the helium hydride ion HeH+ tell us that infrared spectroscopy from SOFIA detected ...rotational ground-state transition of HeH+ at ...
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### How impermeable are the surfaces of the moon?

In the event that we want to dig into the surface of either face of the moon do we know yet if the surfaces of the moon are particularly difficult or particularly easy to dig in?
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### Do we know the availability of any material suitable for solar cells on the moon?

Disclaimer: I have no formal training in any scientific field. Have we located any material suitable for solar panels already on the moon? Or does it appear that they would have be imported?
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### Do we know the fluctuations and constant temperature depth of the moon?

Disclaimer: I have no formal scientific training. From what I understand, surface temperature effects on Earth extend only so far into the ground so that at a certain depth the temperature remains ...
89 views

### Why is the Earth called terrestrial? Can we call the Earth an ocean planet?

Why is Earth called a terrestrial planet even though it is 70% covered by water?
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### Can anyone one show how speeds greater than c cause a paradox on a space time diagram?

So according to Relativity, time moves at different rates for different observers, and distant observers will actually disagree on the order of events. Now from what I gather this gets sorted out for ...
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### How to determine the eccentricity, knowing the orbital speed and distance

How to determine the orbital eccentricity of a planet, knowing the instantaneous orbital speed of it and the distance from the Sun to the planet at that moment?
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### Is there a far away probe that has recorded the light spectrum from Earth as if it were an exoplanet?

We analyze the light spectrum of stars and distant planets to know characteristics like: chemical composition, temperature, mass, etc. Starting from the same principle, a probe at the border of the ...
163 views

### Is blue light not traveling faster then red light in space?

I just can't understand why light and other massless particles are not traveling at different speeds? Gravity effects anything with a mass but light has no mass but a black hole, and weak lensing ...
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### How wide is the Moon's umbra and penumbra at EM-L2?

Measuring the total width of the Moon's umbra and penumbra at EM-L2, 64,700 km, how wide would the shadow be?
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### The reason why the Sun doesn't explode? [duplicate]

I know that the Sun is made up of hydrogen and helium. Also, hydrogen explodes when it touches a flame. But why does the Sun not explode?
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### Black hole density

How does more compression relate to a stronger gravitational pull. Like, when we say that a black hole is a tiny space that has 20-30 suns compressed in it, how does this increase its density and ...
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### Existence of a mass-volume astronomical chart?

I've been wanting to make a mass-volume (or mass-radius) chart for astronomical objects ranging from asteroids to supermassive black holes on a log-log scale. A sort of 'Hertzsprung-Russel' type ...
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### Can Point Set Topology prove that the Alpha Centauri Double Star System is a mirage? [on hold]

The following diagram is a consequence of Apollonian groups. (1) If the diagram is to be taken seriously, a magneto-optic correction of the 137th order for charged particle telescopes will reveal why ...
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### How to improve efficiency in periodicity detection?

Our data set has $10^4$ data points, but has a long baseline and many gaps. If we bin the data, there would be $10^8$ data points ($[t,\rm {value}]$), but only about 1% are non-zero values. How to ...
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### What is that light of the middle of the milky way galaxy?

I'm Being confused what is that light in the middle of milky way galaxy? Image is from Charting the Milky Way From the Inside Out The text with the image explains a lot about the spiral arms and the ...
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### What is the Structure of Earth's atmosphere?

What are the Structure of the atmosphere of the earth and what is the difference compare to other planets ?
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### Are Torsors useful mathematics for modeling Spiral Galaxies? [on hold]

The local interstellar cloud seems to spiral into sunspots as time approaches positive and negative infinity - behavior I've always imagined representative of spiral galaxies. I am curious if any ...
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### Difference of Gas Giant Planet and Ice Giant?

What is the Difference of or the Structure of a GAS PLANET AND AN ICE GIANT Why they called ICE GIANTS like Neptune and Uranus. Do they have a similarity ?
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### Clarity on dust extinction terms and implementation: R_V, A_V, and E(B-V)

I have created a model galaxy spectrum using STARBURST99 and want to compare it to an observed spectrum of a particular galaxy. I understand that I need to redden ...
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### How to correct observed flux densities for redshift

Say I have a spectrum of a galaxy at a redshift $z$, in flux density units of erg/s/cm^2/Angstrom. I'd like to recover the spectrum (in the same flux density units) at z=0, i.e. at its rest ...
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### How does the black hole at the center of M87 look like in the visible spectrum?

I learned here that the picture of the black hole we saw all over the news was a false color image, based on the radio spectrum emissions. How would the black hole at the center of M87 look like when ...
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### The Size of the Observable Universe [duplicate]

In the history it has been demonstrated that the galaxies have gone away between if there is another thing that has allowed us to calculate the value of the acceleration of the expansion that ...
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Is the first image of a black hole that was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope what would be seen with a large enough optical telescope (or with the naked eye from a proper distance of the black ...
70 views

### What is the force that changes a satellite’s inclination when orbiting a planet with an equatorial bulge

I tried looking this up without success and I imagine there's a formula for it, with some ridiculous numbers like it drops off to the 5th power of the distance or maybe even more. Imagine a planet ...
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### Can we get the gas compositions from a gas planets? [on hold]

Is it possible to get some gases like hydrogen from gas planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus or Neptune)?
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### On finding yesterday's star setting time if today's rising and culmination time is given

A star will rise today at 14h 56m and will culminate at 21h 49m. At what time yesterday did the star set? The refraction and horizon lowering can be disregarded.
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### About black hole [on hold]

Is it possible that the center of Universe is a big massive black hole and all the galaxy move around it on its axis due to attraction of massive black hole? And after long time all the gallay are end ...
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### What is the farthest we can see into the universe?

Is there a limit in which the mass in space obscure the ability to detect anything farther even as technology progresses? Related: Can the range of the observable universe be extended through an ...
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### Knowing the RA/DEC of a star how do i locate a star from ground?

Standing in Melbourne at 4 am in the morning on 14th April 2019, Sirus RA = 06h 45m 08.9s, Dec = -16° 42' 58"..How do I Locate this. Standing facing east I turn myself towards south approx 90 Deg and ...
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### Can the range of the observable universe be extended through an intermediary?

I understand that the so called observable universe has a limit we cannot see through. My question is whether we might get information through an intermediate hypothetical actor located halfway to ...
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### Are we looking for brown dwarfs where the dark matter has to be?

We have been repeatedly assured that their ain't enough brown dwarfs to account for all the dark matter in our galaxy. My question is have we been looking in the right places? Or in more detail. ...
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### Black hole rotation and it's significance

Is there is any significance of the direction of black hole rotation with the nature of the instantaneous distortion of space-time curve, the jets coming up in the axis of black holes, and nature of ...
297 views

### Where is the intervening light in the M87 black hole?

The M87 black hole is at the centre, more or less, of an elliptical galaxy of 1 trillion or more stars. So certainly there are stars and other light emitting objects (emission nebula e.g.) in the ...
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### Does interstellar cloud obstruct or reduce the visibility?

We just pictured a medium distant black hole by combining data from various observatories around the world. That's when I wondered if interstellar cloud blocks the visibility at multiple position in ...
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### How does the Large Binocular Telescope resolve so well in both orthogonal directions simultaneously?

The Forbes article Ask Ethan: How Does Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Allow Us To Image A Black Hole? includes an example of optical interferometry from the Large Binocular Telescope, shown below. ...
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### What does the Sun look like from the heliopause?

I calculated the angular diameter of the Sun at the heliopause to be 0.004°. If that is correct, would the Sun appear as a disk, or like the pinpoint of light from a star? How bright would the ...
377 views

### Why does the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) not include telescopes from Africa, Asia or Australia?

The Event Horizon Telescope seems to include these radio telescopes currently: Image by European Southern Observatory (ESO)/O. Furtak; CC-BY 4.0-licensed, see the source on Wikipedia Commons and the ...
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### Superscript-subscript uncertainty notation

While reading publications in astrophysics I've encountered this kind of notation (fictitious example): $$M = 6.1^{+0.6}_{-0.1} \times 10^{30} \textrm{ kg}.$$ Several examples are here, p. 2. I ...
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### What would happen if two objects in two different black holes were connected by an infinitely strong rope? [closed]

I´ve read the answers to this, this, this, and especially this question, and still have questions about how black holes work. Two objects connected by a rope are released into two black holes. As ...
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### Could the Sun have liquid iron in orbit?

How close of an orbit to the Sun could an iron meteor get before it melts into a ball?
79 views

### If a black hole does not emit light, how can one take a picture of the black hole itself?

There's some discussion that the image composed by the Event Horizons Telescope is really just an accretion disk. To "take an image" of something, you need the light reflecting off of the surface of ...
100 views

### Do the “schwarzschild metric” or the “isotropic metric” fit the Event Horizon telescope data on Messier 87 better?

The "Schwarzschild solution" in "Schwarzschild metric" looks like: \text -c^2d\tau^2=-\left(1-\frac{2GM}{rc^2}\right)c^2dt^2+\left(1-\frac{2GM}{rc^2}\right)^{-1}dr^2+r^2(d\theta^2+\sin^2\theta\,d\...
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### Smoothing an SED with binning

I have an (observed) SED of a galaxy, and am attempting to match model SEDs to it. To do this I need to be able to see its shape better, which would involve some sort of smoothing of the spectrum. I ...
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### Did the Moon ever approximate a geosynchronous orbit above the early Earth?

Simulations suggest the early Moon formed about 20,000 to 30,000 km away from Earth which is less than the current geosynchronous orbit of 42,164 km. The Moon is now 384,000 km away from Earth. Does ...