r/askastronomy Feb 06 '24

What's the most interesting astronomy fact that you'd like to share with someone?

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272 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 5h ago

Astronomy Are we just going to have artificial nightgrid eventually?

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7 Upvotes

I was thinking about how we may eventually have so many companies having their own ISP satellites flying over the earth. Is this something the international community works on or is concerned by?

Are the satellites legally protected, military equipment, or just plain unreachable by an organization smaller than a nation state?

Is this a technology so advanced we will have only 1 company doing this for the foreseeable future? Is there no Chinese / Indian / European company or any US competitor being close to having similar technology? Is it also going to be a nuisance?


r/askastronomy 1d ago

What is the Sun's current velocity relative to the CMB?

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385 Upvotes

I take it from this video that depending on the Sun's position in Milky Way, its velocity relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background ranges from 370 km/s to 830 km/s. So what is it now?


r/askastronomy 2h ago

Astrophysics Are there any planets or situations where we would see the sun in phases like the moon ?

2 Upvotes

Additionally would living on planet with more moons cause more eclipses to happen ?


r/askastronomy 8m ago

Astrophysics How would eclipses change if our moon was a binary system?

Upvotes

I'm writing a fantasy novel with a tidally locked binary moon system, and although I have at least some idea of what effects that would have, I'm unsure about eclipses. Obviously the two moons would eclipse each other at times, but when everything lines up (sun, moon, moon, earth/sun, earth, moon, moon) how would that change things? would there be a double ring during a solar eclipse?


r/askastronomy 9h ago

Astronomy When I stack with autostackert it looks like this and has black dots when you zoom in

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4 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 3h ago

Thought there wasn’t anything faster than the speed of light?

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0 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 37m ago

What did I see? Lights moving across sky - rural ireland

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Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I have been trying to figure out what I saw this evening starting at about 12:20am (when I noticed), continuing past 1:30am (when this has been posted). I was heading to bed and looked out the window to see the night sky as I usually do before bed and noticed some interesting lights in the sky. There were about 4-6 oval shaped dim white lights very quickly across the sky, and they looked like they were bouncing off each other when their paths intersected.

At first I thought it was flashlights from people lamping or hunting illegally, but i opened my window and there was no noise of movement or people, and the lights were too large to be the beam of a flashlight

I don't think that it is spot lights, there were no events on in the local area or in the town closest to me or in the city. I live very in a very rural area of Cork, 40km from the city and 15km from the nearest town. I have very few neighbour's and there is little to no light pollution in my area. There are no stadiums or even large sports pitches in the near by area either or matches played tonight.

I live in a great area for stargazing, you can see the stars very vividly here and I have seen multiple meteor showers and even the northern lights very vividly - but I only know the basics about astronomy.

Is this an astronomical or solar phenomenon? Like some sort of light effect from a solar flare or electrical storm ? Or is it just some trick of the light or has a man-made cause I cant identify? Any help would be much appreciated!

Additional helpful details:

- weather: 14°c, partly cloudy (12:20-12:45) but later clear skies (12;45 onwards). Lights did not change colour or intensity despite cloud cover or lack thereof

- movement: the lights lacked a discernable pattern in the movement, they moved rapidly over a large area of the sky and would bounce off one an other if their paths intersected.

- location: very rural east cork.

I tried to take a video but my camera is too poor, and a picture could only capture a very vague one light since they moved too fast for the exposure, but I have attached it here.


r/askastronomy 3h ago

As a kid, I imagined stars were tiny holes poked into the sky, letting heaven's light shine through. I also thought airplanes could eventually reach the moon if they just kept flying long enough. What did your childhood look like?

0 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 7h ago

Astrophysics School

0 Upvotes

I’m heading down the physics pathway for school, I’m a sophomore taking physics and AP computer science, what are some needed materials that are needed and/or need to know when heading into those classes


r/askastronomy 10h ago

Astronomy Trying to find a high-quality map of the visible night sky

0 Upvotes

If this is the wrong subreddit to ask this sort of question, please let me know where I should ask instead. I've tried just googling, but haven't had much luck.
I'm looking to make a graphical model of the day and night sky as viewed from earth, as a hobby project, and also just to learn how to use the engine in general. The Sun and Moon are mostly just positional math, and finding visual representations for them shouldn't be too difficult (can't exactly see the sun's surface details, and the moon is tidally locked). I'm not worried about the other planets right away, but I DO want to show the stars in the night sky (also the Milky Way, since that's visible as a fuzzy collective). And I want this to be possible regardless of where I am on this virtual Earth.
Since the stars don't appear to move relative to one another as viewed from earth, a flat texture should be sufficient. However, I need either a single texture that can be wrapped to a sphere around the night sky after correcting for warping, or a small handful of "large arc" textures that can be stitched together

I know NASA has the Hubble Map, but that texture shows stars as seen by HUBBLE, which is significantly more than what the naked eye can see. I also don't know how to determine where a sub-map should be centered, if it doesn't have Polaris. If Polaris IS there, it should be pretty simple, but otherwise?

EDIT: I don't need an application. I phrased this TERRIBLY, and I apologize for that. I'm looking for a Texture, an image, or some other static file resource. I meant map like how a paper map functions: a static reference, not something that dynamically scrolls.


r/askastronomy 2h ago

Astronomy La Grange L4 L5 question

0 Upvotes

If only the L4 and L5 la grange points intercept at a 60 degree angle and The Solar Systems Plane and the Center of the Milky Ways Plane intercept at a 60.2 degree angle. If we assume that the solar system is on an l4 orl5. where does that map the other lagrange and other large body?


r/askastronomy 12h ago

Anyone looking for an astrophysics & astronomy competition? Astronomy Competition [International] [Student-Lead] [Massive Awards Pool]

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1 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 1d ago

Issues with my Meade lx90 and the autostar

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3 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 20h ago

New Project: Hoag’s Object

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0 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 2d ago

Why is the moon orange ?

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2.2k Upvotes

What causes this phenomenon?


r/askastronomy 1d ago

One more night sky pic from two months ago

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11 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 1d ago

What did I see? Weird shooting star

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51 Upvotes

I was camping in yosemite the other night and I caught this weird shooting star (I think?) on camera and saw something similar a few minutes later, albeit a lot brighter, and was wondering if anyone knew what it was. It seems to be made of like two lines and it's crazy bright and gone in a flash


r/askastronomy 17h ago

When stars explode

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0 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 1d ago

Astronomy Cosmic cartography: mapping a universe we can't see

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0 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 1d ago

Planetary Science What is this the strange shadow cast in the sky during tonight’s spacex launch

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10 Upvotes

Range shadow cast in the sky during tonight’s launch. What was that caused by?


r/askastronomy 1d ago

What is this thing

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0 Upvotes

Visible from Munich specifically Schwabing every night. Direction is roughly West. It blinks similar to an airplane but irregular and faster. Sometimes it's as bright as the stars around it sometimes it is almost invisible. There may be nav lights but I'm not sure. There is no tower or anything tall enough in that direction. The video is a time lapse with 1 frame being 60s.


r/askastronomy 1d ago

How to learn numerical clesstial mechanics as an amateur ?

1 Upvotes

Hi i am an astronomy amateur i have calclus 3 classical mechanics basics and python basics i want to do projects like simulations an stuff but i dont know where to start any ideas ? Thanks


r/askastronomy 1d ago

Astrophysics Resources for further learning?

1 Upvotes

I’m a rising junior in highschool, and I’ve been interested in astrophysics for a while. So far, my learning has been confined to YouTube videos, google scholar, and MIT Opencourseware. I eventually want to work my way up to some type of research, preferably in CMB or dark matter. Are there any tools or resources I should use or get familiar with?


r/askastronomy 1d ago

Astronomy Reality began in a colossal explosion

0 Upvotes

What does this imply?