Tuesday, 31 December 2013

the moon - Historical astronomical lunar tables

I hope this is the right place to ask this question, and I apologise if not.



I've come across a date written in an old book, but it is written using what seems to be a lunar/zodiac system.
Below is a picture of the date (ignore the text above it):



enter image description here



I'm trying to work out what this date would have been in our modern calendar, but I can't seem to find any tables or almanacs that go back that far.



Are there any publicly available tables that do go back to 1587? If not, how exactly could I go about calculating the answer for myself? I am a mathematician, so a bit of wacky maths should be within my capabilities.
This is the answer I'm probably expecting from this site: some kind of program/algorithm/formula to be able to work out on what date the moon would have been in Taurus in



If not, any ideas as to where best for me to ask/look next?

Why do astronomers use supernova to measure distance in space?

Type Ia supernovae are not common; they are rare events, happening maybe once per 100 years in a galaxy. Nevertheless they have two properties that make them fantastically useful for distance measurement.



  1. They are "standard candles". The physics of the supernova detonation, thought to be when a white dwarf accretes matter and exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit, is very "standardised". The bomb goes off in exactly the same way with the same amount of identical explosive. That means to a good approximation, measuring the apparent brightness of a type Ia supernova and comparing it with nearby examples means that the distances to these events can be accurately estimated.


  2. They are really luminous and last 2-3 weeks. This means that they can be seen at enormous distances, they almost outshine the galaxies that they are in, and they last long enough for astronomers to discover them in automated surveys and still have time to follow them up and measure their light curves and estimate their peak brightness.


The limitations are that you can't choose which galaxies you measure the distance to. You have to wait for a supernova to go off and that might take 100 years or more for a particular galaxy. There are also continuing debates about just how standard a candle these objects are. It is possible that more distant galaxies that we see in the very early universe made stars with a different composition (far less elements heavier than helium) and that this alters things a bit. Other problems are associated with "de-reddening" the supernova light curves to account for the possibility of obscuring dust in the host galaxy.



I am a bit puzzled by your question "Why can't the distances between our Sun and the celestial objects be measured directly?" - galaxies are much too far away to have a trigonometric parallax distance, so what were you thinking of? Methods like using Cepheids or RR Lyrae variables don't work for distant galaxies because we can't resolve the individual stars. You could estimate a distance using a measurement of redhift and a cosmological model for the expansion of the Universe, but really the point of using these supernovae was and is to test and improve the cosmological models.

Monday, 30 December 2013

gravity - LIGO gravitational wave chirp signal frequency

This question is about the LIGO gravitational wave signals' frequency. The signals start from about 35 Hz to peak at about 250 Hz, giving evidence of gravitational waves. The question is about the exact frequencies the waves' detection started to the exact peak of the wave.



It seems the LIGO graphs show the peak is a little
above 250 Hz. Are there tables published by LIGO that put the start and peak frequencies as 35 to 250 Hz? The graph in the paper by Abbott, et al shows the start and peak (the start is around 36-37 Hz, the peak seems to be at around 256 Hz) - are there exact numbers (tables) for the start and peak, that one can reference?

orbit - Does the orbital variation in planetary gravity affect the Sun's corona

Dimitris (see below) argues that the syzygies of the Earth and Venus and those of Mercury, Earth and Jupiter distort the Sun's corona, which in some way affects climate on the scale of hundreds of years. Is there any evidence to support the idea that the planets do have such an effect on the sun, other than the correlation noted by Dimitris?



Planetary orbits’ effect to the Northern Hemisphere climate, from solar corona
formation to the Earth climate.



Poulos Dimitris



Abstract
The four planets that influence the most the solar surface through tidal forcing seem to affect the Earth climate. A simple two cosine model with periods 251 years, of the seasonality of the Earth – Venus syzygies, and 265.4 years, of the combined syzygies of Jupiter and Mercury with Earth when Earth is in synod with Venus, fits well the Northern Hemisphere temperatures of the last 1000 years as reconstructed by Jones et al (1998). Later reconstructions that give too much emphasis on multy-centenial variation are due to increased error. The physical mechanism proposed is that planetary gravitational forces derange the Solar Corona that in turn deranges the planetary geomagnetic field causing
temperature variations.



http://www.itia.ntua.gr/getfile/1486/1/documents/PoulosPaper.pdf

Sunday, 29 December 2013

imaging - Can I use an array of inexpensive cameras as an alternative to a telescope?

Yes it would. However, it also depends on your definition of "Detail". For some, it's a tight shot where the whole frame is only a few dozen arcseconds wide, and others think of detail as being wide field, but also "deep" - or having a very high signal to noise ratio.



If you want wide field, and a high signal to noise ratio, then yes, a multi-camera array will work well, and you'd be able to accumulate a large number of high integration time images in a relatively short amount of time.



So here's a breakdown of what you and others who may not know need to know about deep sky astrophotography:



The main goal for all photos is to produce as visually pleasing image as possible. A single image taken of any target will accumulate light from many sources. The first, and obvious source is the light from whatever target you're trying to photograph. The second, less obvious source is light pollution from man-made sources, the moon, and natural sky glow. The third source is the electronic and thermal noise of the camera itself.



Technically, all of these sources are "signal" - however two of the three are unwanted, so we will call the light pollution signal and the camera signal 'noise'. Longer exposures produce more signal from what you want, but also more noise from what you don't want.



Luckilly, noise can be reduced by using several techniques in conjunction with each other. First, you need to take long photos. The signal will increase linearly with time. A 60s photo with a signal of "x" will have a tenth of the signal as a 600s photo. Noise, however, increases with the square root of the exposure. Using the same example, the 600s photo will have a signal to noise ratio that is about 3.2 (sqrt of 10) times better than the single 60s photo.



Increasing the Signal to noise ratio by taking longer exposures is the first step to producing 'detailed' wide field images. Camera noise can be further reduced by taking many images. An array of cameras makes this trivial. Two cameras will produce twice the images as one camera, and 10 cameras will produce 10 times the images as a single camera. That's obvious. Why does it matter?



When we stack images, the more we have, the better the stacking algorithms can preserve the signal we want to keep, and reduce the camera noise we don't. Once again, the signal to noise ratio mathematics work out the same as above. 1 image will have a certain signal to noise ratio, but 10 images will have a signal to noise ratio that can be about 3.2 times higher - because the total integration time has increased ten fold.



Of course, if you're stacking photos, you should be calibrating them as well (dark frames, bias frames, etc) - which really reduce the amount of noise per sub-frame. Because of this, your actual SNR boost by stacking should in theory be a lot higher than 3.2.



If photographed a target across 60 degrees of the sky (30 before meridian and 30 after) then you'd be able to acquire photos for 4 hours. One camera taking 10 minute photos would get 24 photos in the 4 hour period of time. If you had 5 cameras, you'd get 96 photos. 72 additional photos in the same amount of time is a lot of extra data to help reduce the noise, and really let the faint details stand out above the background - especially if all of your photos were well calibrated.

Saturday, 28 December 2013

telescope - What is a quaternary mirror and why does the E-ELT need one?

You may know that a standard Newtonian telescope has two mirrors, they are called the primary and secondary mirror.



The E-ELT has five mirrors: The quaternary mirror is simply "mirror number four", counting in the direction the light enters the scope.



It's complex because that's where the adaptive optics sits:




The quaternary mirror has an approximate diameter of 2.4-m (2380x2340mm). It is a flat adaptive mirror, with up to 8000 actuators, thereby allowing the surface to be readjusted at very high time frequencies. [...]



This mirror will correct in real time for high order wavefront errors (e.g. atmosphere, wind shake, low spatial frequency telescope errors) and small amplitude residual tip-tilt corrections.




Source: The European Southern Observatory's page on the E-ELT optics

Friday, 27 December 2013

How can the Kuiper belt coexist with the 9th planet?


The recent evidence for the 9th planet is an alignment in various parameters of known Kuiper belt objects.




These are not Kuiper belt objects. The Kuiper belt is taken to refer to the neighborhood of Neptune resonances. The scattered disc is another population, further out, and the objects relating to Planet 9 are further still.



A scatter plot showing orbital parameters of many bodies.



Legend: grey = Kuiper belt, green = integer Neptune resonances, blue = scattered disc. The objects in the recent announcement are all off the chart, although their perihelions are <100 AU.



Source: Wikipedia.



The shape of the grey splotch at the left of this chart shows that the Kuiper belt is indeed a collection of populations dominated by Neptune. This isn't news, and it's still taken to be a belt. It goes all the way around the solar system and the orbital eccentricities are low.



This postulated planet might help explain the "Kuiper cliff", the otherwise unexpected cutoff before the 2:1 resonance. But, that's another question. Failing that, there's simply no relation between the Kuiper belt and Planet 9 except that they're both very far away.

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

general relativity - Is it ever possible that the graviation from the mass of kinetic rotational energy will overcome centrifugal force?

This is, I think, somewhat intuitively obvious, but this comment got me thinking about this:



what is gravitational force?



"Rotation speed can create centrifugal force opposing gravity and making things lighter," Rotation also stores energy, and energy is mass, per $E=mc^2$. A body spinning sufficiently fast will exert higher gravity, e.g. a slowly-spinning neutron star will have a weaker gravitational pull than equivalent neutron star that spins very fast."



Intuitively, my answer is "no way", added mass by rotational velocity I would think, could never be extensive enough to counteract the "flicking off" or centrifugal force of very fast rotation. Even with a Neutron Star I would think it's impossible, but I'm not 100% sure, so I thought I'd ask.



If we ignore relativity from motion but not $E=mc^2$, as that's the crux of the question



Centrifugal force = $m v^2/r$



Kinetic energy of rotation = $1/2 I w^2 = 1/5 m v^2$



Mass equivalent of kinetic energy = $1/5 m v^2/c^2$



gravitational force $g=frac{Gm}{r^2}$



so if we apply the gravitational force of kinetic energy



$g = G(1/5 m * v^2/c^2) / r^2$, or, simplified, $G*m*v^2 / r^2 c^2$



and we compare the two equations
Centrifugal $m v^2/r$
additional gravitational $G*m*v^2 / r^2 c^2$



we can remove $m*v^2$ from both on the top and 1 $r$ from the bottom



additional gravitation ratio to centrifugal force = $G/r * c^2$



$G$ and $c$ are numerical. $G$ is very small, $c$ is very big and the ratio grows smaller as the radius grows larger.



gravitational constant: $6.67408 × 10^{-11} m^3 kg^{-1} s^{-2}
c = 2.998 x 10^8 m s-2



the ratio, unless my math is broken, centrifugal force to additional gravity from added mass by kinetic energy of motion = $1/r * 1.35 * 10^{27}$, so you'd need a hugely small r, almost a plank length or a singularity where the added gravity from kinetic energy of rotation would overcome the "flicking off the surface" or centrifugal force.



When I work out the units, I get meters per kilogram, which I don't think is right. The units should cancel out with a ratio of two forces in opposite directions, so I think I made an error, but I don't see where I made it.



My question is two fold. 1) is my math broken? and if so, where? and 2) is the added mass from kinetic rotational energy ever relevant, say in a very rapidly rotating Neutron star? Could it ever assist the Neutron star in collapse or add gravity?, I can see how it could add to flattening, as rotation flattens objects naturally and perhaps, add a speck of gravity on the polls where centrifugal force is zero, but logically, I think, rotational energy would end up spinning any non black hole object apart, long before the added energy of rotation had enough mass to make a measurable difference on gravity. Is my sense right or is there a situation where added mass from energy of rotation could overcome the centrifugal force?

Why is it that we can"t feel how fast the Earth is moving?

Not only Earth is moving but also you with the rest like atmosphere, so you are in closed system. The edge of atmosphere does not fly off because it has nothing to rub against, it just stays in same speed. When you put your hand from the car and you feel the force against it, it is the force which you must make to push the air from your way. If the air would be moving at same velocity as you, your hand would not feel this and you would be able to hold outside of car even at 300km (do not do that, it is dangerous).

Sunday, 22 December 2013

star - Has the sun become way brighter the last years?

Up to last year, I never got blinded by the sun in everyday situations (e.g. running towards it), at no time of the year I was. But since last christmas, it occured to me more often that I cannot watch in the direction where the sun is because it is so bright that it really hurts me.
My mother and my roommate have observed the same phenomenon independently of me.



This, of course, is only anectodal evidence, which is practically worthless. We all get older and we may have the same kind of "photophobia", or we just forgot about being blinded the last few years and just now consciously felt an remembered it.



Therefore I want to ask this question: is there any objectively observable increase of brightness over the last few months and if so, why?

galaxy - How many stars and galaxies can be seen by the naked eye?

How many of the luminous dots that we see naked are galaxies and not stars from our galaxy?



I imagine that the majority of the luminous points that we see naked eye during the night, are actually stars from our galaxy. But how many of them are other objects (other galaxies, nebula, etc.), excluding planets from our Solar System?

Friday, 20 December 2013

astrophysics - K-Pg asteroid impact

It was day and night. That obviously depends on your position on the earth, at any given moment there are places in each of the time zones on the earth.



If you are talking about the impact point, that would be easy to know from the direction it came from - for example if it came from the side opposite the sun, it was midnight.

Thursday, 19 December 2013

space time - Could the Sun's bending of light be measured on photographic plates before Einstein's prediction?

I suggest reading the paper on the 1919 expedition to get a clearer picture of why they did it at that time and why it hadn't been done before. From reading chapter 2 I think the main reason was the astrophotography equipment required for the experiment and the alignment of bright enough stars close to the sun to observe the effect.



Of course before Einsteins prediction in 1911 no one had any specific reason to observe the stars close to a solar eclipse before and during totality, it might seem obvious now but that's hindsight for you.

Tuesday, 17 December 2013

exposure - How does one add false colour to a fits image

I have an exposure of a star field with a small galaxy located near the centre. It is of course a greyscale image. I would like to add colours (realistic) to this image for aesthetic purposes. What software can I use to play around with colours that is Linux compatible and relatively easy to get the hang of? I've been using DS9 which has some colour options but to my knowledge doesn't quite produce a realistic colour image.

Saturday, 14 December 2013

orbit - Does the Sun's light travel fast enough to have a straight path to Earth?

Light travels in straight lines in spacetime, but not necessarily straight lines through space, and the same is true for free-falling orbits of test particles like satellites (when thrust-less). However, in relativity what constitutes 'space' means taking some 'slice of now' through spacetime, which is of course depends on the reference frame one chooses to use.



For weak, slowly changing gravitational fields appropriate to the Sun, a conventional choice is the static weak-field metric
$$mathrm{d}s^2 = -left(1+2frac{Phi}{c^2}right)c^2,mathrm{d}t^2 + left(1-2frac{Phi}{c^2}right)underbrace{left(mathrm{d}x^2+mathrm{d}y^2+mathrm{d}z^2right)}_{mathrm{d}S^2}text{,}$$
where $Phi$ is the Newtonian gravitational potential. Thus, we can compare to a hypothetical flat spacetime, with a flat Euclidean space given by $mathrm{d}S^2$. The trajectory of light follows null geodesics ($mathrm{d}s = 0$), so the light travels as if traveling through a medium of refractive index
$$n = cfrac{mathrm{d}t}{mathrm{d}S} = csqrt{frac{1-2Phi/c^2}{1+2Phi/c^2}}approx 1 - 2frac{Phi}{c^2}text{.}$$
A changing refractive index does make light bend; this is exemplified in the simplest case by Snell's law, although the continuously varying case found here needs the more general Fermat's principle.



You shouldn't take the analogy of a refractive medium too literally. Some differences between an actual medium is that there is no dispersion as the refractive index is independent of frequency, and that there is an additional effect of gravitational redshift not present in refractive media. But the latter is separate issue from the trajectories of light rays, so we can ignore it for our immediate purposes.



Light deflection is quantified by an impact parameter $b$, which can be thought of as the perpendicular distance between the Sun and a hypothetical flat-spacetime trajectory, and a scattering angle $theta$, the angle between that and its actual path in the limit of infinite distance. (Note that the illustration in wikipedia assumes a repulsive rather than attractive potential, but otherwise conceptually it's the same situation.)



Modeling the Sun as having a spherically symmetrical gravitational potential $Phi = -GM/r$, the leading-order light deflection is,
$$begin{eqnarray*}
theta = 4frac{GM}{c^2b} &quad&left(text{if};frac{GM}{c^2b}ll 1right)text{,}end{eqnarray*}$$
which is twice what one would get for a particle at light speed under Newtonian mechanics. For light ray just grazing the outer edge of the Sun (or being emitted from there), this angle is about $1.7$ seconds of arc. Completely radial light rays would not be bent in this spherically-symmetric case.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

cosmology - Is there any other theory, apart from the Big Bang paradigm, which describes the birth of universe?

This is not an answer but a comment which is too long to post as such.



There is no such thing as a scientifically approved theory, there are theories consistent with the evidence some of which are simpler in some sense than others, and philosophy of science tells us that we should prefer those that are simpler.



Also I doubt that the big-bang theory is what you think it is, which is simply that at a certain time in the past the Universe was in a hot dense state which then expanded, forming the lightest chemical elements... The first part of this is a simple extrapolation of the observation of the way that galactic Doppler shift increases with distance and the observed cosmic microwave background. The second part is the consequence of the application of well know nuclear properties of matter.



Now there are plenty of more-or-less widely accepted additions to this, mainly to explain the uniformity and fluctuations in the microwave background, and the emergence of first stars and galaxies etc. But all of these are to some extent speculative since we have no generally accepted unification of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity or require physics that has no predicted consequence (so far) beyond the phenomena it has been proposed in order to explain.



To make this approximate an answer I will point you to the Wikipedia page on Non-Standard Cosmologies

Friday, 6 December 2013

distances - What is the definition of "deep space"?

It's not in any sort of academic context, but in relation to space exploration NASA defines deep space as such:




Deep space is the vast region of space that extends beyond our Moon, to Mars and across our solar system.




Again, not exactly an academic context, but Govert Schiling (the author of Deep Space: Beyond the Solar System to the End of the Universe and the Beginning of Time) in relation to astronomy defines deep space differently:




In a sense, everything beyond Earth’s atmosphere is deep space. But more typically it’s a phrase that has been used by observational and amateur astronomers alike for extended objects beyond the Solar System. I decided to provide a brief introductory section on the Sun and the planets, but the emphasis is really on the objects in our Galaxy and the wider Universe.




So this more or less echoes what some others have contributed, but provides additional context.

Thursday, 5 December 2013

the moon - Is there a threshold on distance/size for a tidal locking?

You can see an example of tidal locking and atmosphere simulation for a planet closely orbiting a dim star. They show a simulation of the atmosphere and some interesting theories about the movement of gasses due to tidal locking (convection) that occurs between the bright and dark side of the planet. The link goes directly to the discussion of tidal locking:



KEPLER 186F - LIFE AFTER EARTH



A similar question was posted in the physics forum and it looks like that could be close to the answer you are looking for:



Tidal Lock Radius in Habitable Zones



I am also interested in tidal locking and hope someone may post a more concise answer.

Tuesday, 3 December 2013

cosmology - What accounts into calculating the Hubble constant?

From my understanding, the Hubble constant $H_0$ calculates from observed redshifts $z$ of distant galaxys against their proper distance $D$. The current value appears to be 67.80(77) $frac{km}{s}Mpc^{-1}$



Calculating the Hubble constant via the redshift, I assume one only wants those velocity contributions due to the expansion of the universe, and not those from the real movement of the galaxies within in cluster (peculiar motion) or so. This, I also read in various online resources (which I can't recall right now).



On the other Hand, if your galaxy cluster is far enough away (eq. ~ 1 Gpc), one can neglect peculiar motion, which is in the order of 1000 $frac{km}{s}$ (1000 $frac{km}{s}$ / (1 Gpc $times$ 67.80(77) $frac{km}{s}Mpc^{-1}$) $approx$ 1.4%)



Nonetheless, how would you try to correct for the peculiar motion, or is it really just neglected? Calculating all the gravitational components in each cluster? Another idea could be to assume that the galaxies within the cluster move randomly in respect to each other and the peculiar motion cancels out over the average? Any other possibilities?



Note that this question is partly a copy of another question of mine at physics.stackexchange.com, which wasn't fully answered but commented to ask it here.

gas - What is a typical value for core-to-star efficiency?

I was reading Unfolding the Laws of Star Formation: The Density Distribution of Molecular Clouds by Kainulainen et al., which discusses star formation rates and efficiencies.



One variable used is $varepsilon_{text{core}}$, the core-to-star efficiency, describing how much gas above the critical value of $s$, the logarithmic mean-normalized density, forms a star.



I'm using this parameter in some calculations, but I'd like to use an average value, as opposed to a value for a given molecular cloud.



What is a typical value for $varepsilon_{text{core}}$?

Monday, 2 December 2013

general relativity - Gravity assist: why is the velocity doubled?

Since the collision is perfectly elastic, the ball's velocity goes from -80
km/h from the train's reference point (negative being towards the train) to
+80 km/h from the train's reference point, a speed increase of 160 km/h.



For a stationery observer, therefore, the velocity goes from -30 km/h
(towards the train) to 130 km/h, an increase of 160 km/h.



The situation you describe only applies if the train isn't moving.



I made an error in units below, assuming the train is moving at 50 km per second (not hour) and that the ball is moving at 30 km per second (not hour), am I'm too lazy to correct it. The general principle, however, still applies.



The confusion may occur because we're ignoring the train's loss of momentum,
which means the train is going slower after the collision, and moving
backwards in its own frame of reference. A slightly more detailed
calculation:



  • Suppose the the train has mass M kg and the ball has mass m kg.


  • From the "fixed" observer's point of view, the initial momentum (in
    Newtons) is:


$rho =50 M-30 m$



and the initial kinetic energy (in Joules) is:



$e=450 m+1250 M$



  • Let $v_t$ and $v_b$ be the train's and ball's velocities in
    meters/second after the collision. Since perfectly elastic
    collisions preserve both momentum and kinetic energy, we have:

$m v_b+M v_t=50 M-30 m$



$frac{m v_b^2}{2}+frac{M v_t^2}{2}=450 m+1250 M$



There are only two solutions to the equation above, one of which is
the initial conditions. The other is:



$
left{{v_b}to -frac{10 (3 m-13 M)}{m+M},{v_t}to -frac{10 (11 m-5
M)}{m+M}right}
$



Plugging in 0.0585 kg for the mass of a tennis ball and 640000 kg for
the train, this becomes:



${{v_b}to 129.9999854,{v_t}to 49.99998538}$



effectively confirming the calculation.



I'm not convinced this is a good analogy, however. Gravitational boost
occurs when a planet's gravity almost captures a spacecraft, thus
nearly making it a satellite, and giving it the same revolution
velocity around the Sun as the planet itself. The wikipedia analogy
bears only a passing resemblance to this.

planet - North Pole Right Ascension/Declination to axial tilt conversion

This is wrong, but may help someone find the right answer:



You can convert right ascension and declination to a 3 dimensional
unit vector in the J2000.0 ICRF reference frame using the standard
formula for converting spherical coordinates to rectangular
coordinates and using a radius of 1:



{Cos[dec] Cos[ra], Cos[dec] Sin[ra], Sin[dec]}



The ra and dec of the north ecliptic pole is ra,dec of
{270, 66.5607083333} per Wikipedia, so the unit vector representing
the north ecliptic pole is:



{0, -0.3977771648286046, 0.9174820582119942}



As it turns out, there is conflicting data for Ceres, perhaps because
of the semi-recent DAWN flyby.



Instead, I'll use Vesta, where wikipedia explicitly states (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Vesta#Rotation):



north pole pointing in the direction of right ascension 20 h 32 min,
declination +48 [... which] gives an axial tilt of 29 [degrees]



Converting to degrees, Vesta's north pole's ra,dec is
{308,48}. Using the formula above to find the unit vector, we get:



{0.411957936296447, -0.527282113378167, 0.743144825477394}



If we take the dot product of two vectors and divide by the product of
their lengths, we get the cosine of the angle between them. In this
case, both vectors have length 1, and the dot product is 0.891563
whose arc-cosine is right around 27 degrees.



So, if Vesta's orbit were the same plane as Earth's orbit, the axial
tilt would be 27 degrees.



However, since Vesta's orbit is inclined 7.14043 degrees to the
ecliptic, this answer is incorrect.



I don't think you can find the correct answer without using Vesta's
inclination and the longitude of its ascending node.



Both of these values are known, but I can't figure out how to use them
to get the correct asnwer.

Saturday, 30 November 2013

the sun - Solar Elevation Angles -- Anomaly?

"The solar elevation angle is the altitude of the sun, the angle between the horizon and the centre of the sun's disc." - Wikipedia



The meridian is when the sun is directly facing earth and is at exactly 90° overhead at some point along the longitudinal line at a given location.



My question is, if the sun is 93 million miles away and travels overhead at 90° between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, how is it that there are Meridian solar elevation angles reported from relatively nearby cities on Earth of less than 89.99°?



Let's take for instance Calgary, Canada as of today May, 04 2016 -- estimated ground distance from Calgary to where the Sun is at 90° on Calgary's longitudinal line is ~3000 miles. The solar elevation angle (aka "altitude") is reported by the timeanddate website to be 55°! -
TimeandDate



Reversing the angle, using right triangle math:



The base angle, our solar elevation angle, of a right angle triangle is:

    "solar elevation angle"= arctangent (h/a)

    89.998151749049 = arctangent (93000000/3000)



So using right triangle math alone with the presumption of the Sun being 93 million miles away and base distance of 3000 miles we get an expected solar elevation angle of 89.998151749049°.



That makes sense, since if something is 93 million miles away from us and you think of it as a triangle, then the distance between any place on earth and the location on earth where the sun is at exactly 90° overhead -- you should expect the other angle of the triangle to be at near 90°, connected by a relatively tiny sliver of distance in a much elongated triangle to the center point of the distant sun.



If we go the other direction and leave out the presumption that the sun is 93 million miles away. We take h as unknown, we know the reported solar elevation angle of 55°, we can again use right triangle math:



    Let a=3000, solar elevation angle=55°
    h = a * tangent ("solar elevation angle")
    4,284.4440202263 = 3000 * tangent(55°)



So according to my calculations, based on the advertised solar elevation angle of 55° at Calgary, Canada on May, 04 2016 at Meridian, at a ground distance of 3000 miles from where the Sun is at exactly 90° overhead --  the Sun is actually only 4,284.4440202263 miles high!



** Update **: The math would work out for a sphere Earth with a radius of 4000 miles, using the exact solar position and adding corrective angles due to a presumption of a spherical curvature:

    Calgary, Canada: 51°03′N 114°04′W
    Location of Sun at Calgary Meridian: 16°23′N 114°04′W
    Distance = 2395.386 miles
    Radius of Earth=4000 miles
    Arc distance = 4790.772 miles
    Width of arc = 4509.52059 miles
    Angle to center of the Earth=68.622754110849°
    68.622754110849°/2=34.31137705542450°



This math utilized calculations that may have had a bit less acurracy but to make it work you need to add a bandaid padding of approximately 34.31137705542450° to Calgary,Canada's advertised angles. If you do you arrive at 55°+34.31137705542450° = 89.31137705542450° which is close to what I would expect to see. If, we are truly living on a Flat Earth, then the calculations would be telling us that the Sun height is only 4,284.4440202263 miles high and we can use simple trignometry.
Arc Calculator
Coordinate Distance Calculator



If the math is difficult for you, you can check with an online triangle calculator such as: Ke!san

Thursday, 28 November 2013

solar system - How did Jupiter form where it is?

It's at Jupiter's distance and beyond that ices were able to form out of the disk of material surrounding the early sun. Go much further in and there is too much energy from the sun for them to stay as solids (and will sublimate into gases); this is why asteroids are principally rocks and metals. So at this distance more of the materials of the planetary disk can form the base planetesimals.



At this point, your question is answered largely by a geometric consideration (or two) and one of Kepler's laws.



First, the geometric consideration. A circle of radius $r$ has area $pi r^2$. The bigger the radius, the more area. The material for Jupiter (or any other planet) came from an annulus: stuff outside one circle, but inside a slightly bigger circle. This annulus had a lot more area for the out planets than the inner planets, and so could contain a lot more mass.



Of course, that could makes us think that Jupiter shouldn't be the largest of the gas giants: it's the closest of them all to the sun, after all. The density of the disk needn't have been approximately constant throughout these regions, though. Quite possibly the density was such that Jupiter's region had more mass than the areas for the other planets. As HDE's answer (posted as I was finishing this) points out, these ices probably also helped stop materials from passing into the inner solar system, maintaining a higher density than you might otherwise expect in the inner solar system, as well as causing materials to sort of "dam up" right around Jupiter's orbit.



Now for the Kepler's law. The further you get from the sun, the slower your orbital period. Picking the correct units, we have $P^2=a^3$, where $P$ is the period measured in years, and $a$ is the semi-major axis of the orbit measured in AU. The further out you go, the slower you go around the sun; indeed, it's not just that it takes you a longer total time, but your actual velocity goes down. We can also see this as a Newton's law of gravity consequence. At Jupiter's furthest point from the Sun, the escape velocity is a little more than 18 km/s. At Saturn's maximum distance, the escape velocity drops to around 13.25 km/s. So things can go roughly 35% faster within Jupiter's orbit than they can closer to Saturn's, and they have less distance to travel to make a complete orbit.



What this means is that it takes longer for planetesimals to get close enough to each other to accrete together the further out you go, and there is a longer mean time between collisions.



Now, eventually, the Sun "turned on" and started blasting space with it's solar wind (before that, the heat came primarily from thermal radiation from the gravitational contraction of the sun). This ended up clearing out most of the unaccreted particles out of the solar system, stopping planetary growth (and removed portions of existing atmospheres; a very young Earth probably had a lot of H and He in its atmosphere, until the sun hit it with enough energy to knock any of it not locked up in rocks away).



So Jupiter was probably in a bit of a goldilocks situation. The average density of the region it formed in was probably higher than where the other giants formed in, it was at the perfect spot for lots of materials to start accreting early, and the accretion process would have been faster. So Jupiter is growing faster, and this gives it a competitive advantage: the bigger the growing planetesimals get the further their influence extends and the faster they can pull in more materials, and subsequently interfere with the growth of other planets (or planetesimals). Somewhere around a mass of 10-15 earth masses, the giants can start pulling in large quantities of the hydrogen and helium gasses. And, again, Jupiter likely hit this mass well before the other giants, and had more material to pull from, so it became much larger than the others could before the solar wind stopped the process.

expansion - Isn't the date of the Big Bang a bit bogus?

If I understand correctly, the date of the Big Bang is an extrapolation of acceleration of the universe's expansion through time based on the erroneous assumption that the universe is approximately 13 billion years old. The age of the universe, as far as I can tell is based on the speed of light and the fact that the furthest we could possibly see into the depths of the universe is approximately 13 billion light-years. Isn't that sort of a cat chasing his tail? It seems that there is no valid reason for believing that the universe is really of a radius of ~13 billion years. That is just as far as we can see. If this is wrong and there is a valid reason for believing that the universe is ~ 13 billion years old, then that fact makes for a very interesting possibility. That the expansion rate of the universe is equal to the speed of light, which leads to a very interesting suggestion that I pursued for quite awhile (until it became apparent that the suggested size of the universe is not what it seems), that the expansion rate of the universe is equal to the speed of light. Or, put another way, is it possible that the speed of light is based on the expansion rate of the universe?

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

orbit - Are trojans in L5 more likely than in L4?

There is a symmetry in the rotating gravitational field, which means that capture of an asteroid to the L4 is just as likely as to the L5 Lagrange point.



In the case of Mars the split is 1:6, and a simple binomial model suggests a probability of 0.0625 (the probability of a 1:6 or 0:7 split given the hypothesis that they are distributed randomly is 0.0625) This doesn't give a reason to suppose there is anything unusual happening, and as noted in the comments, there is no favouring of L5 when other planets are considered.



As noted by UserLTK: "Earth has an L4 asteroid, none in L5. Uranus also has an L4, no L5 and Neptune has more L4 than L5 objects."



The conclusion is that No, the greater number of L5 martian trojans is just a random effect.

Tuesday, 26 November 2013

How rare are earth-like solar eclipses?

We can certainly speculate.



There are dozens of moons in our own Solar System. I've done some preliminary calculations of their apparent size as seen from the planet vs. the apparent size of the Sun at that distance. The large moons (Jupiter's 4 Galilean satellites, Saturn's Titan, Neptune's Triton) are all substantially larger in the sky than the Sun is. I think there are some satellites that are fairly close to the apparent size of the Sun, but I haven't done all the calculations.



The apparent size of our Moon has changed over time, as the Moon has gradually moved farther away. We are coincidentally in a period of history in which it happens to be very nearly the same apparent size as the Sun.



The criterion for an exoplanet to have solar eclipses like the spectacular ones we have here on Earth is a moon that happens to have an angular size large enough to cover the photosphere, but not so large that it also hides the corona. For a larger moon, you'd have eclipses in which the corona is visible, but not all the way around the moon. For a smaller moon, you'd only have annular eclipses. (It could also get interesting if you consider eclipses as seen from other moons.)



So given the distribution of sizes and distances of moons in our Solar System, we can guess that situations where the apparent size of a moon and sun closely match is fairly rare, but since there are moons whose apparent size is smaller than the Sun and others whose apparent size is larger than the Sun, it probably happens sometimes.



The one piece of the puzzle that we're still missing, I think, is the typical sizes and distances of satellites of Earth-like planets. Moons the size of ours orbiting habitable planets might be common or very rare. If they're rare (say, if Mars-like moon systems are far more common), then Earth/Moon style eclipses might be very rare for habitable planets.

orbit - When will all eight planets in our solar system align?

Any estimate of the common period of more than two planets (i.e., after how much time do they approximately align in heliocentric longitude again?) depends very strongly on how much deviation from perfect alignment is acceptable.



If the period of planet $i$ is $P_i$, and if the acceptable deviation in time is $b$ (in the same units as $P_i$), then the combined period $P$ of all $n$ planets is approximately $$P approx frac{prod_i P_i}{b^{n-1}}$$ so reducing the acceptable deviation by a factor of 10 means increasing the common period by a factor of $10^{n-1}$, which for 8 planets is a factor of 10,000,000. So, it is meaningless to quote a common period if you don't also specify how much deviation was acceptable. When the acceptable deviation declines to 0 (to achieve "perfect alignment"), then the common period increases to infinity. This corresponds to several commenters' statements that there is no common period because the periods are not commensurate.



For the planets' periods listed by harogaston, $prod_i P_i approx 1.35times10^6$ when the $P_i$ are measured in Julian years of 365.25 days each, so the common period in years is approximately $$P approx frac{1.35times10^6}{b^7}$$ if $b$ is measured in years as well. If the periods are approximated to the nearest day, then $b approx 0.00274$ years and $P approx 1.2times10^{24}$ years. If the periods are approximated to the nearest 0.01 day, then $b approx 2.74times10^{-5}$ and $P approx 1.2times10^{38}$ years.



The derivation of the above formula is as follows:



Approximate the planets' periods by multiples of a base unit $b$: $P_i approx p_i b$ where $p_i$ is a whole number. Then the common period is at most equal to the product of all $p_i$. That product is still measured in units of $b$; we must multiply by $b$ to go back to the original units. So, the common period is approximately $$P approx b prod_i p_i approx b prod_i frac{P_i}{b} = b frac{prod_i P_i}{b^n} = frac{prod_i P_i}{b^{n-1}}$$



The above derivation doesn't take into account that the $p_i$ might have common factors so that the alignment occurs sooner than $prod_i p_i$ suggests. However, whether or not any two $p_i$ have common factors depends strongly on the chosen base period $b$, so it is effectively a random variable and does not affect the global dependence of $P$ on $b$.



If you express the acceptable deviation in terms of angle rather than time, then I expect you'll get answers that depend on the size of the acceptable deviation as strongly as for the above formula.



See http://aa.quae.nl/en/reken/periode.html for a graph of $P$ as a function of $b$ for all planets including Pluto.



EDIT:



Here is an estimate with acceptable deviation in terms of angle. We
want all planets to be within a range of longitude of width $δ$
centered on the longitude of the first planet; the longitude of the
first planet is free. We assume that all planets move in the same
direction in coplanar circular orbits around the Sun.



Because the planets' periods are not commensurate, all combinations of
longitudes of the planets occur with the same probability. The
probability $q_i$ that at some specific moment of time the longitude
of planet $i > 1$ is within the segment of width $δ$ centered on the
longitude of planet 1 is equal to $$q_i = frac{δ}{360°}$$



The probability $q$ that planets 2 through $n$ are all within that
same segment of longitude centered on planet 1 is then $$q =
prod_{i=2}^n q_i = left( frac{δ}{360°} right)^{n-1}$$



To translate that probability to an average period, we need to
estimate for how much time all planets are aligned (to within $δ$)
each time they are all aligned.



The first two planets to lose their mutual alignment are the fastest
and slowest of the planets. If their synodic period is $P_*$, then
they'll be in alignment for an interval $$A = P_* frac{δ}{360°}$$ and
then out of alignment for some time before coming into alignment
again. So, each alignment of all planets lasts about an interval $A$,
and all of those alignments together cover a fraction $q$ of all time.
If the average period after which another alignment of all planets
occurs is $P$, then we must have $qP = A$, so $$P = frac{A}{q} = P_*
left( frac{360°}{δ} right)^{n-2}$$



If there are only two planets, then $P = P_*$ regardless of $δ$, which is as expected.



If there are many planets, then the fastest planet is a lot faster
than the slowest one, so then $P_*$ is very nearly equal to the
orbital period of the fastest planet.



Here, too, the estimate for the average time between successive
alignments is very sensitive to the chosen deviation limit (if there
are more than two planets involved), so it is meaningless to quote
such a combined period if you don't also mention what deviation was
allowed.



It is also important to remember that (if there are more than two
planets) these (near-)alignments of all of them do not occur at
regular intervals.



Now let's plug in some numbers. If you want all 8 planets to be
aligned to within 1 degree of longitude, then the average time between
two such alignments is roughly equal to $P = 360^6 = 2.2×10^{15}$
orbits of the fastest planet. For the Solar System, Mercury is the
fastest planet, with a period of about 0.241 years, so then the
average time between two alignments of all 8 planets to within 1
degree of longitude is about $5×10^{14}$ years.



If you are satisfied already with an alignment to within 10 degrees
of longitude, then the average period between two such alignments is
roughly equal to $P = 36^6 = 2.2×10^9$ orbits of Mercury, which is
about 500 million years.



What is the best alignment that we can expect during the coming 1000
years? 1000 years are about 4150 orbits of Mercury, so $(360°/δ)^6
approx 4150$, so $δ approx 90°$. In an interval of 1000 years
chosen at random, there is on average one alignment of all 8 planets
to within a segment of 90°.

Monday, 25 November 2013

cosmology - How can cosmic inflation make an infinite universe homogeneous?

Inflation is used to explain why the observable universe is extremely homogeneous.



Without inflation, we can do the following crude calculation. The cosmic microwave background was formed about 300,000 years after the big bang, at a redshift of about 1100. Thus causally connected regions at the epoch of CMB formation would have a radius of $sim 300,000$ light years, which has now expanded by a factor of 1100 to be $3.3times 10^{8}$ light years in radius.



This can be compared with the radius of the observable universe, which is currently around 46 billion light years. This means that causally connected regions should only be $sim 4 times 10^{-7}$ of the observable universe, or equivalently, patches of CMB of $sim 2$ degrees radius on the sky are causally connected. This is clearly not the case as the variations in the CMB are no more than about 1 part in $10^{5}$ across the whole sky.



Inflation solves this by allowing previously causally connected regions to inflate to become larger than the entire observable universe.



You appear to understand this quite well, so I am not entirely clear what your question is. We cannot know whether the entire universe is homogeneous, since we cannot measure it. The cosmological principle is an assumption that appears to hold approximately true in the observable universe, but need not apply to the universe as a whole. Indeed it is not absolutely true in the observable universe otherwise it would be quite uninteresting, containing no galaxies, clusters, or other structure. I think the only requirement on inflation is that it blows up a patch of causally connected universe so that it becomes much bigger than the observable universe at the current epoch.

observational astronomy - Universal point for sky observation

With the axis of rotation of the earth matching the axis of rotation of the stars, and the equator of the earth matching the equator of the stars, any place along the equator would match what you have described. However due to closeness to the horizon, the polar-most stars wouldn't be visible. If you were able to get a hundred metres or so above the ground, with nothing in the surrounding landscape, you could see all of the stars in the sky over a year's time.

Sunday, 17 November 2013

navigation - uses of coordinate systems

Wikipedia describes the five following celestial coordinate systems each with rectangular/spherical variants:



  • horizontal

  • equatorial

  • ecliptic

  • galactic

  • supergalactic

What are the practical preferred uses of each, in relation to the others. If you were navigating within the solar system, which system would you use, or has been used by existing craft?



For example wikipedia describes the ecliptic system as "still useful for computing the apparent motions of the [celestial bodies]", which seems pretty bloody obsolete. Even though it seems to me as the most intuitively useful system.

Friday, 15 November 2013

Why are there no stars on New Horizons images of Pluto

I followed the New Horizons Mission a little, and saw among others this image of Pluto:



Pluto's eclipse



I wonder, why you can't see any stars on it. As far as my very basic knowledge in astronomy goes, I think you can even see stars during a "Sun-Moon-Eclipse" here on earth. So besides having here a spectacular "Sun-Pluto-Eclipse", I further more ask myself if that eclipse is even necessary to see other stars, as those pictures are already taken quit far away from sun, and outside an atmosphere.



Is that not enough to see stars? Or does NASA remove the stars from the images, before publishing them? (If so, why? Not to distract?)



Thanks for answers!

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

star - Conversion from Equatorial Coordinate to Horizon Coordinates

It depends from which celestial coordinates you are converting. I suppose you are working in equatorial coordinates. Then, you can convert as following:



$$tan A = {sin h over cos h sinphi_o - tandelta cosphi_o} $$ $$ begin{cases}
cos a sin A = cosdelta sin h \
cos a cos A = cosdelta cos h sinphi_o - sindelta cosphi_o
end{cases}$$ $$sin a = sinphi_o sindelta + cosphi_o cosdelta cos h$$



Where $A$ is azimuth, $a$ altitude, $alpha$ right ascension, $delta$ declination, $h$ hour angle and $phi_0$ the observer's latitude.



Source: Wikipedia

Sunday, 3 November 2013

the sun - Why don't these Clouds show no depth perception in correspondence to the Sun

It may not seem related, but here's a detailed answer: http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/27643/why-dont-cameras-capture-dynamic-range-as-our-eyes-do



The camera doesn't differentiate between different colors and brightness nearly as well as our eyes do so in the photos you linked, both the clouds in-front of the sun and sky that's kind of around but looks behind the sun appear the same color and to our brains, it appears the sun is rising in the middle of the clouds - like a tall building or mountain peak might appear in the middle of some clouds.



If you were there in person when the photo was taken, this illusion probably wouldn't be there. (nice photos though).

Thursday, 31 October 2013

the sun - What constellation does sun occupy by location and date?

You can see for yourself for any date and location using the free Stellarium program (http://stellarium.org/).



The constellation that the Sun is in as seen from Earth does not depend noticeably on the precise location of the observer on Earth. It depends mostly on the time of year. Here are the approximate days of the year at which the Sun enters a new constellation:



  • Aries: April 18

  • Taurus: May 14

  • Gemini: June 21

  • Cancer: July 20

  • Leo: August 10

  • Virgo: September 16

  • Libra: October 31

  • Scorpius: November 23

  • Ophiuchus: November 29

  • Sagittarius: December 17

  • Capricornus: January 19

  • Aquarius: February 16

  • Pisces: March 12

The "approximate" part is that the Sun may be up to one day earlier or later than the quoted dates, just like the start of the seasons may be one day earlier or later than the average. (Actually, it is the calendar that is early or late with respect to the phenomenon.) Also, because of the precession of the equinoxes, these dates shift by about 1 day every 70 years.



See http://aa.quae.nl/en/antwoorden/sterrenbeelden.html#6.

Can earth escape sun's gravity with the help of a black hole heading towards our solar system?

I'm thinking, this is the gist of your question




Earth feels a zero net force. Will it help earth to fly away?




First, zero net gravitational force between two large objects is certainly possible, well, not exactly zero, not for more than an instant anyway, but close to zero, absolutely possible, but whether it leads to an object flying away is more complicated. It depends on the relative motion of the 3 objects.



The Moon, for example, orbits the Earth, but from the Moon's point of view, the Sun is about 333,000 times more massive than the Earth and about 388 times further away, (on average) when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun (390 times when the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth, again on average. There's some variation in there).



Because gravitation drops with the square of the distance, 388 times more distant means about 151,000 times less G force at that relative distance, but with 333,000 times more mass, the Moon actually experiences over twice the gravitational tug from the Sun than it gets from the Earth, so, even though, from the Moon's surface, the Earth is much larger than the Sun, the sun's mass is sufficient to exert the greater gravitational pull.



So, if, by some magical power, you were to grab a hold of the Earth and stop it from moving and grab a hold of the Moon and stop it too, then let the Moon go, the Moon would fall more towards the Sun than the Earth cause the gravitational pull in that direction is over twice as much. (Ask this great magical being not to let go of the Earth, because if he does, the Earth would fall into the Sun too).



That's not quite the same as your scenario but it points out that zero net gravitation doesn't govern where an object ends up. The Moon orbits both the Earth and the Sun, and it's in a stable orbit around the earth even though it's feeling more gravitation from the Sun. That's because the Moon is inside the stable part of the Earth's Hill Sphere.



In your scenario, however, a passing object the mass of another star could certainly pull the Earth away from the Sun. It wouldn't even need to achieve a net zero gravitation to accomplish that, nor would it need to be nearly so massive.



The picture below covers the Earth orbiting around the Sun. If you bring the net Gravity to zero, in theory the "F" in the diagram shrinks to zero and the Earth continues straight in direction V for that time period, increasing it's distance from the Sun. Source



http://buphy.bu.edu/~duffy/PY105/Earthsun.GIF



The Earth's tangential velocity relative to the sun is 30 km/s and it's escape velocity is just the square root of 2 times that, about 42.5 km/s, so an acceleration of the Earth of 12.5 km/s or moving the Earth to an orbit a bit outside Mars' orbit and keeping the velocity the same would both work (or some combination of the two).



The model is a bit more complicated because a gravitational assist, which would also happen in your scenario and a gravity assist can work both ways, increasing or decreasing the orbital velocity. It's possible, depending on direction of the pass, that a passing star could push the Earth closer to the Sun, even passing outside, if it slows the earth's velocity by gravity assist. Drawing it away isn't the only possible outcome.



More on gravity assists here, Short and Longer.



As James Kilfinger points out, stars passing that close is extremely extremely rare so this kind of thing, for all practical purposes, virtually never happens. It's much more rare than a dinosaur killing meteor for example. It's hugely unlikely.

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

amateur observing - Watching the Mercury transit with improvised devices

Mercury's angular diameter on transit day will be 12 arcseconds.
A camera obscura using a 12 mm aperture could resolve it; one lens from +0.75 diopter reading glasses, if you can get them, will project a bright 12 mm image of the Sun at a distance of 1.33 m.
Note that a larger aperture or a shorter focal length will make the Sun image hotter than direct sunlight unless you add a filter.



Test with sunspots before relying on it for Mercury.
If it counts as improvised, projection with 7x35 binoculars easily showed me the 2012 transit of Venus.

Thursday, 24 October 2013

early universe - Is it possible to get a glimpse of the Big Bang through gravitation waves?

Gravitational waves from the big bang may be "heard" but not by LIGO. The waves emitted at or around the inflationary epoch of the big bang are expected to be at much lower frequencies (milli-Hz or lower) than those announced today by LIGO. There are various sources of noise that make LIGO insensitive to GWs at frequencies below about 10 Hz.



It will take space-based interferometers like the proposed LISA, with longer interferometer arms and well away from terrestrial sources of noise to stand a chance of detecting such GWs.



If they are detected - they might "sound" something like this (if upshifted into the audible range) - from the LIGO website. It sounds like white(ish) noise because of the broad continuum of frequencies expected.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

size - How thick can planetary rings be?

There is an explanation for why rings flatten out here. The general mechanism is that particles collide, and gets a very uniform momentum. Thus, any set-up giving unusually thick rings is in essence "cheating".



Here are some ways:



Moons can cause spiral waves in the rings, giving them more of a structure in the z direction. The ones known in Saturn's rings has a modes amplitude of just 10-100 m, but larger Moons can easily increase that.



Another way is simply having massive rings. Then they can not get more flattened, as there are no more empty space to remove.



A tilted ring relative to the Planets orbit around the star is going to experience tidal forces, as long as the radius of the rings is some notable fraction of the planet's orbital radius. From the context that sparked the question, that is not a suitable mechanism though, along with the possibility of having a so low density that particle collisions are rare.



However, more promising:



The halo ring of Jupiter is estimated to be around 12500 km thick (about the same as the diameter of the Earth), and are very fine dust kept from condensing into a disc by both the magnetic fields of Jupiter, and by iterations with the Galilean Moons.



We have four planets with rings in the solar system, so the sample size is quite small. Applying some small-sample-size statistical methodology, in this case an unusual application of the German Tank Problem, we can give a rough but realistic maximum thickness of a ring:



$$N approx m+frac{m}{k}-1$$



Where $m$ is the highest observed value, and $k$ the sample size.



Modified slightly to get a non-integer version that makes some sense, we get:



$$max_{thickness} approx 12500km+frac{12500km}{4} approx 16000km$$



By no means a very certain limit, but at least about what can obtain from what we know.

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

"Supernova" is the explosion or the resulting celestial body? Is it incorrect to call the explosion "supernova"?


Is it incorrect to call the explosion “supernova”?




Yes and no.



Better said, the explosion is the very first part of a supernova. While the explosion lasts for but a few seconds to a few hundreds of seconds, a supernova can last for hundreds of days. What we see visibly as a supernova are the after effects of that explosion. The explosion can create lots and lots of stuff moving at very high velocities, and lots and lots of highly radioactive nuclei.



If the star had outgassed material prior to the explosion, the highly kinetic material produced by the explosion runs into that previously outgassed material and makes it glow. This takes some time to cool down. The radioactive material produced during the short course of the explosion proper takes time to decay to stable elements. This radioactive decay eventually produces gamma rays, some of which is absorbed by the nearby material, heating it, thereby eventually producing thermal radiation.



For example, a type Ia supernova produces a large amount of nickel-56. This decays to cobalt-56 with a half-life of about 6 days, which in decays to iron-56 with a half-life of about 77 days. The heating that results from these decays is what we see, and because it is so predictable, this is makes type Ia supernovae a fantastic standard candle.

Friday, 18 October 2013

exoplanet - A star a black hole and planets around them

It's possible to have planets orbiting a binary pair of stars, your scenario of a close orbit, sometimes called "short orbit binaries". See here, also posted above in comments. In such a binary-system, nothing can orbit an individual star, but at some distance, plants can orbit and some systems like this have even been observed, listed in the link. The orbital dynamics is the same for a star-black hole short-orbit binary.



Now, there are problems. Black holes form out of very large stars and the formation is one of the biggest explosions in the universe, a Type II supernovas, and that's not very friendly to any planets in orbit. A star might survive it, planets would be harder, though it might be possible for new planets to form from nebula material remaining after the nova (I'm just guessing there).



A black hole could also form from a Neutron star accreting matter, but you still have the problem that the formation of a Neutron Star also only happens out of a Type-II supernova, so such a system has a difficult beginning.



Edit: While some planets have been observed around Neutron stars, these appear to be quite rare. 2 Neutron Stars have been observed with planets, out of over 1,600 Neutron stars observed. A type II nova is very planet unfriendly.



Theoretically a close gravitational capture is possible, but those are very rare, as stars rarely get that close. There's many stars that are known to orbit the super-massive black holes at the center of our galaxy (Andromeda galaxy too), but stars and stellar mass black holes are much more rare. A few have been observed, but they don't appear to be common. Such a system would be easy to observe, so the fact that there are only a few that have been noticed is evidence to them being rare. Here's a few mentions of them. One, Two, Three, Four.



From the 4th article, which is from 2011, so more may be known now, but it says:




Only about 20 binary stellar systems are known to contain a black
hole, out of an estimated population of around 5,000 in the Milky Way
Galaxy.




A 2nd problem is that a star feeding a black hole would create an accretion disk which would be very radioactive and not ideal for life on an orbiting planet. Maybe the planet could have a very thick atmosphere that might protect it, but that would also likely reduce sunlight reaching the surface. The star feeding the black hole would also be losing mass, and over time, grow smaller and provide less light and heat to the planet. Ideally, you'd want it to be a very slow feed. It's pretty far from an optimal life on planet situation.




So it is possible to have planets in this system not to be consumed by
this black hole but just follow their unique orbits




This part is certainly possible. Things can orbit a black hole at a safe distance without any problem. As for life, we don't know how common life is in other solar-systems so nobody can say how likely it might be, but it's theoretically possible, but, in my opinion, pretty far from ideal.

the sun - What would the Sun be like if nuclear reactions could not proceed via quantum tunneling?

Short answer: Without tunnelling, stars like the Sun would never reach nuclear fusion temperatures; stars less massive than around $5M_{odot}$ would become "hydrogen white dwarfs" supported by electron degeneracy pressure. More massive objects would contract to around a tenth of a solar radius and commence nuclear fusion. They would be hotter than "normal" stars of a similar mass, but my best estimate is that they have similar luminosities. Thus it would not be possible to get a stable nuclear burning star with 1 solar luminosity. Stars of 1 solar luminosity could exist, but they would be on cooling tracks, much like brown dwarfs are in the real universe.



A very interesting hypothetical question. What would happen to a star if you "turned off" tunnelling. I think the answer to this is that the pre-main-sequence stage would become significantly longer. The star would continue to contract, releasing gravitational potential energy in the form of radiation and by heating the core of the star. The virial theorem tells us that the central temperature is roughly proportional to $M/R$ (mass/radius). So for a fixed mass, as the star contracts, its core gets hotter.



There are then (at least) two possibilities.



The core becomes hot enough for protons to overcome the Coulomb barrier and begin nuclear fusion. For this to happen, the protons need to get within about a nuclear radius of each other, let's say $10^{-15}$ m. The potential energy is
$e^2/(4pi epsilon_0 r) = 1.44$ MeV or $2.3times 10^{-13}$ J.



The protons in the core will have a mean kinetic energy of $3kT/2$, but some small fraction will have energies much higher than this according to a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. Let's say (and this is a weak point in my calculation that I may need to revisit when I have more time) that fusion will take place when protons with energies of $10 kT$ exceed the Coulomb potential energy barrier. There will be a small numerical uncertainty on this, but because the reaction rate would be highly temperature sensitive it will not be an order of magnitude out. This means that fusion would not begin until the core temperature reached about $1.5 times 10^{9}$ K.



In the Sun, fusion happens at around $1.5times 10^7$ K, so the virial theorem result tells us that stars would need to contract by about a factor of 100 for this to happen.



Because the gravity and density of such a star would be much higher than the Sun, hydrostatic equlibrium would demand a very high pressure gradient, but the temperature gradient would be limited by convection, so there would need to be an extremely centrally concentrated core with a fluffy envelope. Working through some simple proportionalities I think that the luminosity would be almost unchanged (see luminosity-mass relation but consider how luminosity depends on radius at a fixed mass), but that means the temperature would have to be hotter by a factor of the square root of the radius contraction factor. However, this could be academic, since we need to consider the second possibility.



(2) As the star shrinks, the electrons become degenerate and contribute degeneracy pressure. This becomes important when the phase space occupied by each electron approaches $h^3$. There is a standard bit of bookwork, which I am not going to repeat here - you can find it something like "The Physics of Stars" by Phillips - which shows that degeneracy sets in when
$$frac{ 4pi mu_e}{3h^3}left(frac{6G Rmu m_e}{5}right)^{3/2} m_u^{5/2} M^{1/2} = 1,$$
where $mu_e$ is the number of mass units per electron, $mu$ is the number of mass units per particle, $m_e$ is the electron mass and $m_u$ is an atomic mass unit. If I've done my sums right this means for a hydrogen gas (let's assume) with $mu_e=1$ and $mu = 0.5$ that degeneracy sets in when
$$ left(frac{R}{R_{odot}}right) simeq 0.18 left(frac{M}{M_{odot}}right)^{-1/3}$$



In other words, when the star shrinks to the size of $sim$ Jupiter, its interior will be governed by electron degeneracy pressure, not by perfect gas pressure. The significance of this is that electron degeneracy pressure is only weakly dependent (or independent for a completely degenerate gas) on temperature. This means that the star can cool whilst only decreasing its radius very slightly. The central temperature would never reach the high temperatures required for nuclear burning and the "star" would become a hydrogen white dwarf with a final radius of a few hundredths of a solar radius (or a bit smaller for more massive stars).



The second possibility must be the fate of something the mass of the Sun. However, there is a cross-over point in mass where the first possibility becomes viable. To see this, we note that the radius at which degeneracy sets in depends on $M^{-1/3}$, but the radius the star needs to shrink to in order to begin nuclear burning is proportional to $M$. The cross-over takes place somewhere in the range 5-10 $M_{odot}$. So stars more massive than this could commence nuclear burning at radii of about a tenth of a solar radius, without their cores being degenerate. An interesting possibility is that at a few solar masses there should be a class of object that contracts sufficiently that nuclear ignition is reached when the core is substantially degenerate. This might lead to a runaway "hydrogen flash", depending on whether the temperature dependence of the reaction rate is extreme enough.



Best question of the year so far. I do hope that someone has run some simulations to test these ideas.



Edit: As a postscript it is of course anomalous to neglect a quantum effect like tunnelling, whilst at the same time relying on degeneracy pressure to support the star! If one were to neglect quantum effects entirely and allow a star like the Sun to collapse, then the end result would surely be a classical black hole.



A further point that would need further consideration is to what extent radiation pressure would offer support in stars that were smaller, but much hotter.

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

history - How was precision astrometry done before digital imaging?

Prior to digital imaging then photographic plate negatives were analysed with scanning microdensitometers to produce astrometric catalogues. Many of these catalogues are still in use today, they are valuable sources of early epoch positions that enable proper motion measurements.



For more details you could look at the descriptions of the SuperCosmos project http://ssa.roe.ac.uk// (which is based on Schmidt plates) or the UCAC4 catalogue, http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/readme_u4v5, which uses plates to get positions and proper motions for faint stars.



In the good old days, before even these catalogues existed, astronomy groups would have copies of the whole Schmidt and Palomar sky surveys. You would put the relevant plate on a massive, concrete-based, hydraulic X,Y measuring machine, with a binocular microscope. You would measure sets of Standard stars, get a 6-coefficient fit to convert x and y into RA and Dec,then find your objects on the plate, measure x,y, calculate RA and Dec. Then snap a polaroid to use as a finder chart at the telescope.



I was doing this as late as 1995 before the advent of the Digitised Sky Survey.

Monday, 7 October 2013

the sun - If there are neutron stars, would most stars be considered "proton stars"?

Protium is a proton + an electron.



Under enormously high pressure, it's energetically favorable for electrons to merge with protons and become neutrons - see here.




are stars mostly protons




By mass, yes, at least before they get too old.



The mass of the universe is more complicated, but anything solid that we think of as matter is made of atoms, which are by mass, mostly protons and neutrons (you can break it up further than that if you like, but that's best for another question).



Most hydrogen has no neutrons so any hydrogen rich object (the sun, most young stars, gas giant planets) are by mass, mostly protons. That's no longer true when a star gets close to the end of it's life and has burned much of it's hydrogen.



Jupiter, by mass is roughly about 80% protons. The sun, because it's been turning hydrogen into helium for about 4.5 billion years, is roughly about 67% protons by mass. The Earth, mostly other elements, Oxygen, Silicon, Iron, etc, is a about 50% proton by mass.




Would stars like our Sun be considered "proton stars"?




I suppose you could use that term, but I don't see any benefit to it. It's not too different than calling the sun a "hydrogen" star. All stars start out as hydrogen stars.

Sunday, 6 October 2013

galaxy - Was the Milky Way ever a quasar?

A quasar is simply an active galactic nucleus (AGN) that is viewed from a particular angle; see the picture below, in which quasars are labeled "QSO". This is really a remarkable figure because historically all of the names in the figure were thought to correspond to different types of objects, when really they all refer to the same thing! AGN



Your question really shouldn't be "Was there ever a quasar in the Milky Way?", since the dotted line in the figure would correspond to the Galactic plane and we would not see Sagittarius A* (the Milky Way's super-massive black hole) from the correct angle. A better question might be, "Has Sagittarius (Sgr) A* ever been active?" The answer to that question is yes; according to this page it was probably active (very bright with a jet) about 10,000 years ago. However, at the moment, it isn't really doing anything, since it isn't currently accreting anything (to put it plainly, it isn't eating anything, so it doesn't have enough energy to be active). However, many astronomers (myself included!) are anxiously waiting for a cloud of gas called G2 to fall into Sgr A*. We are hoping that Sgr A* will burp or do something interesting.

Saturday, 5 October 2013

astrophysics - In what units to quote the thermal Blackbody temperature

Im not entirely sure what you mean, but the (planck's) formula for blackbody radiation is given by enter image description here



where h is in [J*s], c in [m/s], lambda in [m], k in [J/K] and T in [K].
So, the temperature is just in Kelvins, not in energy.
This formula, with these units, gives S in [W/m2/m], which describes the amount of energy per temperature and wavelength. There is no need to convert a given temperature to energy.



source

Tuesday, 1 October 2013

orbit - Does the Sun turn around a big star?


Does the Sun turn around a big star?




No. Such a star, if it existed, would easily be the brightest star in the sky. You would have been taught about it early on in school if it existed. But it doesn't.



For a while it was conjectured that the Sun had a small companion star to explain a perceived periodicity in mass extinction events. This too has been ruled out by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.




What are all the intermediate subsystems up to motion around the center of the Milky Way?




Our Sun, being a single star, is a bit of an oddity. Most stars are members of multiple star systems, typically pairs.



Some stars occur in clusters. The Pleiades is a relativity nearby (440 light years) cluster of stars. Someone with extremely keen eyesight and exceptionally good viewing conditions, might be able to see 14 stars of the over 3,000 stars that form this cluster. Open clusters such as the Pleiades don't last long. The stars in an open cluster are only weakly bound to the cluster and are eventually dispersed.



A key feature of the Milky Way is its spiral arms. Our Sun is currently in a lesser arm of the Milky Way, the Orion Arm. Stars however are not gravitationally bound to spiral arms. One widely used explanation of the spiral arms is that they are gravitational traffic jams in space.




We could also ask the same beyond...




Our galaxy is a member of the Local Group, which in turn is a member of the Virgo Supercluster, which in turn is a part of the Laniakea Supercluster. Even larger scale objects include galaxy filaments. And that's where the hierarchy ends. The expansion of space overtakes gravity at such immense distances.

Does gravity bend light, and how much time does it take for light to cross gravity of a Black Hole?

You are quite right: Einstein's theory says the curvature of space is locally deformed. The essence of this is captured in the spacetime 'metric', a mathematical tool that tells us what space looks like and, derived from this, what is meant by 'a straight path', which photons take. If there is no source of gravitation present, the path of a photon will be what you know intuitively as a straight line. However, for some mass concentration (e.g. a black hole, as you say), this path will be bended such that the mass concentration acts as a lens. This is immediately clear from this image from the CFHTLenS survey:



enter image description here



Crucially to your question I think, you must remember that photons do not experience time and their speed is equal to $c$, the speed of light. Photons are not unaffected by their movement through a gravitational field, mind you: but this shows up as a gravitational redshift (for a time-varying potential), rather than a time delay (other than the slightly elongated path, perhaps).



Besides that, the age of the Universe is typically not quite measured as you say, but rather through parameter estimation in e.g. the cosmic microwave background. The effect of gravitational lensing needs to be taken into account for that, but not in the way you presume.



Also, remember that an extreme gravitational field such as that of a black hole is relatively rare, and even if it did delay the photon for a 1000 years that is still a tiny fraction of the age we would, according to your way of thinking, infer; the photon would have to encounter a LOT of such black holes for this 'effect' (which does not occur) to have a huge impact.



As a general point, you seem to have some (Interstellar-induced?) misconceptions about the universe, but I think that's not for me to address here.

Sunday, 29 September 2013

observation - Could there be a closer star to Earth than the Alpha Centauri triple star system, excluding the Sun?

In this answer you can find a calculation for how bright "Nemesis" would be at near-infrared wavelengths. This calculation assumed we were looking for a 20 Jupiter mass object with a similar age to the Sun at a distance of 1.4 light years (to fit in with the Nemesis hypothesis). The calculated magnitudes were H=14 and W2=8 (in the WISE infrared satellite system).



If we relax the assumptions and let the object be 4.4 light years away, we have to add 2.5 magnitudes to these numbers. i.e. H=16.5 and W2=10.5. Whilst the former is right on the edge of detectability in the 2MASS survey, the former is comfortably detectable in the WISE survey (limit is about W2=15.6 see http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allsky/ ) and the object would have a large parallax/proper motion. Whether this would be detectable might depend on the presence of a good "first epoch" image. In the case of the brown dwarf Luhman 16 at 6.5 light years (but which is maybe 40-50 Jupiter masses), well it showed up easily in first epoch 2MASS images (H=9.6).



Now, your question asks whether a star may have been missed. Such an object would be much brighter than the hypothesised brown dwarf above, or Luhman 16. The "industry-standard" models of Baraffe et al. (1998) suggest that a $0.075 M_{odot}$ minimum mass stellar object at 4.4 light years would have H=7.5. It is hard to imagine how such an object would have been missed, unless it has such a small proper motion that it has not moved significantly between the 2MASS survey in the 90s to the WISE survey in ~2010. This is unlikely (but not impossible).



Once Gaia results are published in 2017, it will have complete parallax data for all stars down to about V=19. This should include even the lowest mass M-dwarf stars out to around 10 parsecs (30 light years).

Thursday, 26 September 2013

How many planets are there in this solar system?

In addition to Undo's fine answer, I would like to explain a bit about the motivation behind the definition.



When Eris was discovered, it turned out to be really, really similar to Pluto. This posed a bit of a quandary: should Eris be accepted as a new planet? Should it not? If not, then why keep Pluto? Most importantly, this pushed to the foreground the question




what, exactly, is a planet, anyway?




This had been ignored until then because everyone "knew" which bodies were planets and which ones were not. However, with the discovery of Eris, and the newly-realized potential of more such bodies turning up, this was no longer really an option, and some sort of hard definition had to be agreed upon.



The problem with coming up with a hard definition that decides what does make it to planethood and what doesn't is that nature very rarely presents us with clear, definite lines. Size, for example, is not a good discriminant, because solar system bodies come in a continuum of sizes from Jupiter down to meter-long asteroids. Where does one draw the line there? Any such size would be completely arbitrary.



There is, however, one characteristic that has a sharp distinction between some "planets" and some "non-planets", and it is the amount of other stuff in roughly the same orbit. This is still slightly arbitrary, because it's hard to put in numbers exactly what "roughly" means in this context, but it's more or less unambiguous.



Consider, then a quantity called the "planetary discriminant" µ, equal to the ratio of the planet's mass to the total mass of other bodies that cross its orbital radius and have periods up to a factor of 10 longer or shorter. This is still a bit arbitrary (why 10?) but it's otherwise quite an objective quantity.



Now take this quantity and calculate it for the different bodies you might call planets:



enter image description here



Suddenly, a natural hard line emerges. There's a finite set of bodies that have "cleared their orbits", and some other bodies which are well, well behind in that respect. Note also that the vertical scale is logarithmic: Neptune's planetary discriminant is ~10,000 bigger than Ceres'.



This is the main reason that "clearing its orbital zone" was chosen as a criterion for planethood. It relies on a distinction that is actually there in the solar system, and very little on arbitrary human decisions. It's important to note that this criterion need not have worked: this parameter might also have come out as a continuum, with some bodies having emptier orbits and some others having slightly fuller ones, and no natural place to draw the line, in which case the definition would have been different. As it happens, this is indeed a good discriminant.



For further reading, I recommend the Wikipedia article on 'Clearing the neighbourhood', from which I took the data for the image. If you don't mind skipping over some technical bits, go for the original paper where this was proposed,




What is a planet? S Soter, The Astronomical Journal 132 no.6 (2006), p. 2513. arXiv:astro-ph/0608359.




which is in general very readable.

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

space - What is the composition of an asteroid in percentages?

I am developing a RPG game (or so I like to tell myself) within outer space. Within the game, players would be able to mine small asteroids and collect resources, in order to make money. I'm having some difficulty determining exactly how much of the resources there would be in relation to everything else gotten from the asteroid.



This image has provided me with a good idea of what asteroids generally contain. It does not, however, show me the quantities. For example, I'm fairly certain that an asteroid would have more oxygen than palladium, but I don't know by how much.



Question: Can someone tell me (or better yet show me) the percentage of materials within an asteroid? I realize not all asteroids are the same, so categorizing or averaging is fine. The more detailed the better. The ideal information would be a list of values that I can scale with asteroid size.

Monday, 23 September 2013

extra terrestrial - Why would discovering life on another planet be important/matter to us?

I had a funny thought, and would like to pose it to you:



When I was a kid, reading any kind of astronomy or similar books would all say that there was no other life in the universe, and made it pretty clear that anyone thinking there could be was probably off his rocker.



Nowadays, it seems this has become a very important question for astronomers and other scientists, a new deep-seated belief that must now be proven. Some seem to think it would be the most important discovery of all time.



I'm wondering why?



My guess is, if we did 'discover' life on another planet, it'll make the news for a bit, and then the average person will go back to their every day life without much more thought about it.



For me, I would think this is great, only insofar as it means a possible new source of food (i.e., some delicious exotic cuisine assuming it's edible, and possibly even some place to go conquer and colonize if there was any profitability/money in doing so).



For some scientists, though, I get the sense it's more of an axe to grind with the long-dreary he-said she-said argument of science vs. religion.



Why do you think it would matter?



My question assumes any life discovered is probably not going to be very 'interesting' life, at least nothing we're going to have a conversation with.

Saturday, 21 September 2013

galaxy - Is there a map of the galaxies?

A map of all galaxies gets kind of unwieldy, like a map of all stars in the milky way or a map of every house in the country, or every grain of sand on a beach . . . you get the idea.



Start here - Local Group



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/5_Local_Galactic_Group_%28ELitU%29.png



Source



Then Virgo Supercluster



enter image description here



Source



Then local superclusters



enter image description here



Source



And an article, even if it's a summary it's very much worth reading, with a more recent map with a "ginormous" supercluster that includes the milky way.



http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2023458/thumbs/o-LANIAKEA-900.jpg?6



and here's another, more info here.



The largest of these maps is some 520 million light years across, so this is just a tiny part of the entire known universe, which (depending on how you measure) is either 27.5 billion light years across or 84 billion light years across.



It's worth pointing out, I haven't actually answered your question, and that was deliberate, cause I think the nearest 520 million light years is enough and it's all we have a really good picture of anyway (as far as I know). The farther out you go the more holes and inaccuracies there will be in the map.



There's also some closer stuff that's blocked by the Milky way so we can't see it, like the great attractor. No worries about superclusters eating our galaxy one day because dark energy expansion keeps these super-clusters from merging most of the time. Andromeda will merge with the Milky way in about 4 billion years though but we're not expected to ever merge with the great attractor, even as it pulls our galaxy towards it, the distance between us is growing.

Thursday, 19 September 2013

atmosphere - Why can't moon light (reflected sun light) turn the sky blue?

The simple answer is that it does, but it's not bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. The atmosphere scatters the blue light just like sunlight.



The full moon (like the sun) fills about 1/2 of 1 degree of the sky, the entire sky being 180 degrees, give or take, so the full moon fills less than 1 part in 100,000 of the night sky, so there simply isn't enough blue light to be visible over the brighter stars even with the brightest full moon. Our eyes are very good at seeing variations in brightness, but not that good. . . . and, for what it's worth, the night sky has always appeared to have a dark bluish tint to me, but that might just be my brain playing tricks on me because logically I know it's there. I'm not sure whether it's actually visible.



With a good sized telescope, moonlight scattering acts as a form of light pollution. Telescope users know that you get better visuals when there's no moon.



Source.

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

How to calculate the heliocentric velocity of an object?

The heliocentric velocity $V_mathrm{H}$ of an object is its velocity wrt. the Sun. When you measure an object's velocity, you measure it in the reference frame of Earth, which revolves around the Sun with ~30 km/s (varying a bit from aphelion to perihelion), so convert to $V_mathrm{H}$ you need to know the time of the year of the observation (unless the line of sight toward your object is exactly perpendicular to the ecliptic plane), as well as the angle between the line of sight, and the line of sight toward the Sun. This involves a number of sines and cosines that you can find in e.g. Barbieri (2006).



If you further want to convert from $V_mathrm{H}$ to the reference frame in which the Milky Way's center is at rest, the Local Group is at rest, or the Cosmic Microwave Background is isotropic (the "cosmic" frame), then you use the formula you link to, adding a similar term as described above, but instead using the velocity (i.e. speed and direction) of the Sun wrt. to the given frame.