# Tag Info

4

Most of your assumptions are correct. However, right ascension and declination are an equatorial system, while (heliocentric or geocentric) longitude and latitude are an ecliptic system. The reference planes do not coincide, even though the main reference point, the vernal equinox, does—this is because that point is where the ecliptic crosses the equator ...

3

Your general idea about this process is correct. At close semimajor axis distance, rock can evaporate and will form a Silicate-oxygen atmosphere. For low-mass rocky planets, the condensation flow from day to night-side, as it necessarily is very hot, will have to compete with the possibility of instead escaping vertically from the nightside, instead of ...

2

Weight is a property of mass which you can experience only when on the solid surface of a gravitating body - but not when you are in free fall. Yet even in free fall you retain your mass. Weight is the force the mass exerts on a scale (in the presence of and proportional to the strenght of a gravity field which pushes the mass onto that scale - which ...

2

I imagine that a planet will become too hot for Earth type life - or even hypothetical life with different biochemistries might be able to live at much higher temperatures than Earth life - long before it becomes engulfed by its star's atmosphere. Even the coolest stars have surface temperatures of a few thousand degrees, so a planet which is close enough to ...

2

An effect, but not a noticeable effect. Wikipedia gives a formula for the frame-dragging in a a Kerr metric: $$\Omega = \frac{r_{s} \alpha c}{r^{3} + \alpha^{2} r + r_{s} \alpha^{2}}$$ where $\Omega$ is the angular speed that the frame of reference rotates at, $r$ is the orbital radius (70 billion metres for Mercury), $r_s$ is the Schwartzchild radius of the ...

1

"Icy" only refers to the initial contribution of water ice to the total core mass and core equation of state. High-pressure water is either solid (at cold temperatures) or a supercritical ionic liquid (for hotter temperatures) (e.g. Baraffe et al. (2008)). While for low core masses ($m_c<\sim 17_{\oplus}$) the mass-radius relationship is near-...

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