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1500 questions
11
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How much do the constellations change if the viewpoint moves within a solar system?
My question is pretty simple. How would the night sky change if you were in a different planet within the same solar system? Specifically the fixed stars. Would the constellations be essentially the same? Different? Of course, having more or less…
skout
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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 collision.
The next thing we would need to think about…
user51331
11
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2 answers
How often does Earth cross the galaxy regions with higher supernovae activity?
According to Summa Technologiae, a book by a Polish author Stanisław Lem that based his science fiction novels on scientific research of the era, the Earth crossed in the moment of forming of life the arms of the Galaxy, with high supernovae…
Danubian Sailor
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Did this satellite streak past the Hubble Space Telescope so close that it was out of focus? If so, how close was it?
The new Nature Astronomy paper The impact of satellite trails on Hubble Space Telescope observations (Kruk et al. 2023) describes an AI-based object classification method used to find satellite trails in Hubble Space Telescope images.
Hubble images…
uhoh
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11
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How long would it take for a rogue planet to evaporate in the late stages of the Universe?
I've read once a popular science book, in which the author calculated how long would it take for the most massive black holes to evaporate because of Hawking radiation. He claimed that after that time the Universe will be the soup filled only with…
Danubian Sailor
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11
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Small bright constellation on the photo
I did a photo of the night sky and wanted to find a constellation on it. I've suggestion that it is Delphinus constellation. Could you please help me figure it out. Also, I'm curios about good way to figure out constellations on a photo.
pacman
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11
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3 answers
The shape of the moon limb/crescent (terminator line)
Given that that n% of the moon is illuminated. I want to (approximately, but more or less correctly) draw the the terminator line on the circle (that represents the moon). Orientation is not the case here, just the crescent shape.
What is the…
WHITECOLOR
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How is Halley's comet still in one piece?
According to the first answer of This question parts of Halley's comet hit the Earth every spring as part of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower. If this is true, then how is the comet still in one piece? If parts of this thing are breaking off every year…
Deko Revinio
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What is the most common activity of astronomers in the JWST?
I am no astronomer. I am a computer scientist.
I recently read this article: JWST has changed the speed of discovery, for better or for worse - Astronomers are working at a furious pace to analyze and test whopping amounts of JWST data.
Are…
Demis
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Can the Hubble constant be measured directly?
By my calculations, the expansion of the universe should cause LIGO’s interferometers to alternate between constructive interference and destructive interference every couple days. Is this a practical way to measure the Hubble constant directly? If…
Spencer Joplin
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11
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Farthest distance two objects are "gravitationally bounded", considering expansion of the Universe
The narrative is: "on greater scales the expansion of the Universe dominates, but on smaller scales gravitationally bounded objects still stay bounded". But how small is meant by "smaller scales"?
Galaxy superclusters are the biggest gravitationally…
Heopps
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11
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2 answers
How would a person know if a planet is orbiting a binary star?
I read in Neil deGrasse Tyson's book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry that scientists can tell if a star has a planet orbiting it because the light appears to shake.
So if in the case of a binary star which is quite obviously shaking because its…
Tardy
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11
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How do astronomers calibrate the intensity scale of their spectrometers?
Discussion on Strange bump in solar spectrum taken with home-made spectrograph made me wonder: How do astronomers calibrate the intensity scale of their spectrometers? I mean, how to take in consideration the characteristics of the particular…
Luis López
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What is the bright orange star?
After reading this NASA article on Tarantula's Nebula of this image:
What is the really bright orange star in the center or upper-left of the young blue stars? The second link further provides information but not enough:
To the upper left of the…
DialFrost
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11
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Are there any probabilistic models for the likelihood of finding a rogue planet closer to us than Proxima Centauri?
There are some articles that claim there could be more rogue planets than stars in our galaxy such as this one.
Now if this were true one might expect that there is a rogue planet closer to the earth than the star Proxima Centauri. Have any models…
Sidharth Ghoshal
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