29
votes
Accepted
Why did the dust between the planets disappear during the birth of the solar system?
Dust happens in two ways. "Primordial dust" just condenses out of the protostellar material in the disc providing it gets cool enough and dense enough. "Second generation" dust is ...
- 146k
27
votes
Accepted
The star that created our sun
There is no single progenitor of the Sun. The material that makes up the Solar System (or at least the elements heavier than helium) were made in approximately a billion stars that lived and died ...
- 146k
12
votes
Is it possible to view the sun and moon in the sky at the same time?
It is not only possible it is exceptionally common. When the moon is nearly new (and very close to the sun) it is not visible because the glare of the sun is too bright, and when the moon is nearly ...
- 116k
9
votes
Integration of Plank curve of the Sun
There are two issues here: one of definitions and one of code.
First, the value you're expecting to get here -- 1361 Watts per square meter, the solar constant -- is the total flux received from the ...
- 36k
9
votes
Accepted
How did the temperature of the solar system evolve?
There is no "nuclear flash". The approach to a stable, hydrogen-burning star is rather smooth and in fact the Sun was more luminous during its first few million years as a protostar than it ...
- 146k
8
votes
Accepted
Integration of Plank curve of the Sun
There is two issues:
a) you have to use Earth distance to get the Solar constant, but you use 1pc ($10^{16}$m)instead of one astronomical unit (150 million kilometers, $1.5\cdot 10^{11}$m). That's a ...
- 17.7k
3
votes
Integration of Plank curve of the Sun
The integral of the Planck function over all wavelengths gives the surface flux at the photosphere of the Sun divided by pi.
In order to get the solar constant, you should multiply this by $\pi \times ...
- 146k
1
vote
Is it possible to view the sun and moon in the sky at the same time?
When I was a child, I was outside during the day, I think in the backyard of our house, and I happened to look at the sky and see the Moon.
I was surprised to see the Moon in the sky during the day, ...
- 7,439
1
vote
The star that created our sun
This supernova exploded about (somewhat before) 4,568.2 million years ago (the likely age of the oldest meteorites dated to time, source).
It was not the only source of the material for the Sun, but ...
- 212
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible