# All Questions

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31 views

### Visitors that became satellites?

To anyone's knowledge, has there ever been an object that approached the earth and was captured into an orbit? Is it thought that there might be such objects simply too small to spot or just not ...
49 views

### Propagate Earth trajectory for 1 Myr

What is the most accurate way of propagation of Earth trajectory relatively to the Sun? I need to calculate the Earth-Sun distance. Is there any library on Python? I've used before JPL Horizons, ...
49 views

### Moon changes position

So most nights the Moon usually rises on the right of the sky when I look through the window just like the previous night. But this night the Moon was on the left of the sky rising. Does anyone know ...
30 views

### Does the spin rate of a black hole correspond to a physical feature?

If the mass and orbital period for two neutron stars is known before collapse to a black hole and the rate of spin is known after collapse, 100 revolutions per second for instance, that will correlate ...
49 views

### The energy density of DM (to be fluid,state parameter=-2)increases with time. Does it violate the concept of accelerating universe?

We know that dark energy with value of state parameter $\omega<-1$ is called phantom dark energy model. In this model if we assume dark energy to be a fluid with value of state parameter $\omega=-2$...
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### How many Moon's Topocentric Conjunction occurs per lunar month?

It is clear that only one Moon's Geocentric Conjunction occurs per lunar month, what about the Topocentric Conjunction for a given location? without scale I can imagine many Topocentric Conjunctions ...
39 views

### How to calculate phase angle of a satellite?

I'm making a program for predicting satellite passes. I'm trying to find out if the satellite is illuminated by the Sun and not in Earth's shadow. I need to know its phase angle: the angle between the ...
32 views

### Could there be a M-type asteroid beyond Jupiter?

Is there any reason to think an M-type asteroid could not have migrated beyond Jupiter and entered an orbit similar to the Centaurs?
44 views

### What do the fusing 'onion layers' of a pre-supernova star look like to scale?

I'm sure we've all seen the diagrams of various layers of element fusion from hydrogen to silicon in a star that's just about to go supernova. (Picture from courses.lumenlearning.com) I suspect ...
31 views

### How many parent stars contributed to our solar system? [duplicate]

All of the stuff that isn't hydrogen and helium (which came from the Big Bang), that coalesced to form our solar system (the iron, the sulfur, the water, and so forth) all came from previous ...
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### Get a table of Moon phase angle per day

Where can I get a table with the Moon phase angle for each day ? It's available here for a given day, but I would have to input each day of a year to get a full table. === NEW EDIT : 2019-09-18 ===...
107 views

### How much volume of gases could be added to Mars atmosphere that the planet gravity can retain?

This article Mars atmosphere states that Today Mars atmosphere is very thin, but it was not always like this. Around 3.5 billion years ago, the red planet had a thick enough atmosphere for liquid ...
55 views

### Formation of the First Stars

I've got a few questions about the first stars to form in the universe. First off how might metalicity have impacted the formation of the first stars and also what effect would the absence of metals ...
6k views

### Is it possible that the shadow of The Moon is a single dot during solar eclipse?

During a solar eclipse The Moon covers The Sun on some places on the Earth. Now the focal point is a bit above the Earth so the shadow area is about 160 miles. In history The Moon was a bit closer to ...
81 views

### Cosmological redshift vs doppler redshift

I'm reading Harrison's "Cosmology: Science of the universe" because Harrison focuses on the distinction between cosmological redshift (he calls it expansion redshift) and the Doppler redshift. He ...
76 views

### What is a black hole's “shadow” and the best angle to view it to measure the spin?

This excellent answer mentions several ways to try to observationally measure the spin of a rotating black hole. The third one is intriguing, but I don't understand how this works: The spin of a ...
172 views

### When did people discover that the Earth is not an ideal sphere, but a little flattened?

When did people discover that the Earth is not an ideal sphere, but a little flattened? And if you know, who was the first person to discover it?
24 views

### Dispersion: any software to work out the dispersed waveforms of EMW signals that propagate via interstellar medium for some distance?

Is there any software (toolbox, code, package, paid or opensource are both ok), to work out the dispersed waveforms of EMW signals (time series data are given), that propagate via the interstellar ...
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### Does the Sun have a numerical designation in any star catalogues?

Given the existence of large star catalogues listing millions of astronomical objects with numerical designations (such as Tabby's Star, KIC 8462852) it occurred to me that one of them might contain ...
181 views

### Can we see evidence of sunspots on other stars

Searching for exoplanets by measuring the change of a stars brightness when an exoplanet transits the star's disk also has the potential to detect exo-sunspots. Have they ever been detected?
100 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 ...
21 views

### Redshift, velocity, distance

How are redshift, (recessional) velocity and distance of a galaxy related? I understand what v=HD states. So I assume that Hubble measured a direct relation between the distance and recessional ...
563 views

### Can I see Harvest moon in India?

I just saw articles which say the Harvest moon will be visible in the US. Apart from the US, in which other country can people see it? Can I see it from India?
31 views

### How to model and subtract nebular emission lines from stellar spectrum

I have optical stellar spectra from a star forming region with spatially varying nebular background. I want to subtract the nebular lines from the stellar spectra (which are varying in intensity from ...
34 views

### Any night sky image databases

I was wondering if there were any available databases for photos of the night sky. It doesn't have to feature pictures of any particular star, just has to be a large collection of photos from the ...
5k views

### How do we know that black holes are spinning?

How is it possible to know if a black hole is spinning or not? If a planet is spinning, you can see it clearly but you can't really see a black hole. Next thing would be that matter interacts with ...
79 views

### Storm on Earth vs. storm on Jupiter?

Why is the storm on Jupiter much stronger than storms on Earth and why don't the storms on Earth get as big as Jupiter's great red spot
36 views

### Why does the outside edge of a Kerr black hole ergosphere rotate at the same speed as the inner edge?

Reading through the Wikipedia on a Kerr black hole ergosphere, and this nice question on the maximal spin rate of a black hole leads me to ask: why does the outer edge of the ergosphere rotate at the ...
87 views

### What makes scientists already so certain that Comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) is a comet and not an asteroid?

US Naval Research Laboratory scientist Dr. Karl Battams has recently tweeted Unlike 'Oumuamua, whose asteroid-or-comet nature still gets debated, this one is definitely a comet. If it is ...
62 views

### How to derive the date (day, month) from the day of year? [closed]

Is there any formula to derive date from day of year? Say I want to know the date of 255th day of 2019. That is 9/12/2019.
61 views

### Sky from Equator at 8,000 years Before Present?

The Stellarium software allows future views of the sky. I need an online resource (planetarium projector?) that shows pre-historical views, and from the Equator at 8,000 years before the present.
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### Would two Earth-like planets on opposite sides of a Sol-like star at about 1 AU be a stable configuration?

Would two Earth-like planets on opposite sides of a Sol-like star at about 1 AU be a relatively stable configuration? I understand that there are tadpole-like orbits and the two planets may not stay ...
48 views

### What is the intensity distribution of visible light over the solar disk?

What is the distribution of the visible spectrum over the solar disk? Images of the Sun using the visible spectrum suggest that the light emmitted from the edge is almost equal to the light emmited ...
78 views

### Gravitational lensing

I was reading about gravitational lensing. I was just curious to know if there are any formulae or methods to find the angle at which the light deflects due to strong gravitational lensing? And how ...
23 views

### Angle of the Sun during winter solstice

What is the angle of the Sun on the eastern horizon at 35° latitude if it is the winter solstice?
118 views

### Why is this telescope so short? How hard is it to make such a fast primary?

The recently discovered object C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) is in the news because it might have an eccentricity greater than one, which means it might be from outside the solar system, though not necessarily. ...
32 views

### What equipment do I need to measure the spectrum of a star?

For an amateur astronomer, is it possible to measure the spectrum of a star? I can easily take a photo of a star just by putting a camera on one end of a telescope and over exposing it. But I would ...
34 views

### Do we know what happens at the boundary of the universe, what are some theories about it? [duplicate]

Do we know what happens at the boundary of the universe, what are some theories about it? Does space time differ at the boundary? Do things become larger at the boundary? Do the trajectories curve and ...
135 views

### What is the size of the largest asteroid orbiting the Earth, other than the Moon?

It seems odd to me that no other asteroid around the Earth is even close to the size of the Moon. Anyone have any idea about the size and orbit radius of Earth's "second moon" ?
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### Syncing time for measuring the parallax of Mars

I read somewhere (I can't remember the website) that when Cassini and Jean Richer measured the parallax of Mars, they used Jupiter's (or maybe Saturn's) moons to sync their time. How was this done?
134 views

### Is every star formed in an open star cluster?

As far as I understand, an open cluster is formed from a single molecular cloud, with each star in the cluster having roughly similar age and properties. Our Sun is not part of any star cluster, but ...
92 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!
52 views

### What parameters cause sunburn? [closed]

I am new to this site so if the question doesn't fit in this forum feel free to remove it. I have read here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunburn of all the causes of sunburn and I was mostly aware ...
168 views

### What will future populations of stars be like?

As stars slowly using up hydrogen and ejecting heavier elements into space, the future stars will form from nebulae that are more metal and helium rich. The question is: how does the increased ratio ...
35 views

### Can the electric field of the Earth's be used for satellite maneuvering? [migrated]

Is it feasible to create a strong dynamic dipole inside a satellite so that it can be rotated on its axes and even possibly pushed in a direction due to the Earth's Normal Electric field. This might ...