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Unanswered Questions

225 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
10 votes
0 answers
211 views

How well conserved is etendue in extreme gravitational lensing scenarios?

This excellent answer to Could dark matter exist in the Universe in the form of sufficiently dense objects? includes the following image and description: Light from the background galaxy circles a ...
7 votes
0 answers
256 views

Get the expression of probed volume between 2 redshifts

1) I can't manage to find/justify the relation (1) below, from the common relation (2) of a volume. 2) It seems the variable r is actually the comoving distance and not comoving coordinates (with ...
6 votes
0 answers
69 views

What is the reason for the dispute over the variation of core mass with heavy metal abundance?

In Metal-Poor Stars IV: The Evolution of Red Giants, Rood writes The differences in the results of these papers are large enough to introduce appreciable uncertainties into the study of the ...
6 votes
1 answer
189 views

Do narrow lines in the spectra of O- and B- type stars always indicate magnetic fields?

I was reading a paper on the differential emission measures of a set of hot O- and B- type stars. As the authors discuss in Section 3 (page 959), two stars, $\tau$ Sco and $\theta^1$ Ori C, have ...
6 votes
1 answer
495 views

Could non-supernova carbon, oxygen, or silicon flashes be observed?

I was reading about the helium flash, the short but sudden onset of helium fusion in certain red giant stars. As I understand, the upper (nondegenerate) layers of the star absorb the energy as they ...
5 votes
0 answers
70 views

Do all the accretion disks around a compact object (black hole or neutron star) emit astrophysical jet outflow?

Do all the accretion disks around a compact object (black hole or neutron star) emit astrophysical jet outflow? I mean is it mandatory for a jet to be emitted from an accretion disk? If so, then why? ...
5 votes
0 answers
69 views

Type Ia supernova by fallback?

Is it possible for a massive star of more than 1.4 solar masses (probably around 3 or more but below the threshold for type II) to collapse into a white dwarf and a planetary nebula, then go supernova ...
5 votes
0 answers
79 views

Obtaining the derived period of $\omega$ Canis Majoris

I have read these two papers: On the nature of the Be phenomenon I. The case of ω Canis Majoris Stellar and circumstellar activity of the Be star ω CMa II. Periodic line-profile variability In the ...
5 votes
0 answers
185 views

What are some good books/online resources for astronomy problem sets?

I am currently studying for the international olympiad for astronomy and astrophysics (the syllabus can be found here: https://www.ioaastrophysics.org/syllabus/). I am currently using Carroll Ostlie's ...
5 votes
0 answers
62 views

Strength of core-envelope coupling in stars

For a star with a given Zero-Age Main Sequence (ZAMS) mass, as a function of metallicity how strongly is the star's core coupled to its envelope? I understand that the core-envelope boundary is only (...
5 votes
0 answers
110 views

How often do comet occultations of stars happen?

By travelling to specific places, astronomers can see three thousand star comet transition events every year at m15 for the major (50km+) comets and asteroids averaging about 20 seconds, perhaps that'...
5 votes
0 answers
123 views

How is the age of a star on the Henyey track calculated?

I was reading Stellar Evolution in Early Phases of Gravitational Contraction, by Chushiro Henyey, where he writes, If $L \propto R^{-\alpha}$ along the path, the age of a star from the time when $R=...
4 votes
0 answers
193 views

'Star' appeared dimmer and dimmer over multiple days before disappearing. What could this have been?

This happened a little while ago but I've just been thinking about it! I was in Wales for a holiday, and over the period of 7 days, a particularly bright 'star'(or at least a bright dot that looked ...
4 votes
0 answers
411 views

Calculation of average FWHM by PSF fitting of all the detected stars in the fits image

I need to calculate the FWHM of all the stars detected via the DaoStarFinder package/any other package by performing PSF fitting in Python. Here is the code for my detection. ...
4 votes
0 answers
69 views

What is the contribution of star-produced axions to the dark matter budget of the Milky Way?

I try to follow the discussion of axions since Peccei, Quinn, Wilzcek and Weinberg. What I still don't understand is how much the speculated stellar production of axions could add to the galactic dark ...

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