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Unanswered Questions

155 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
8 votes
1 answer
622 views

Why do the Sun and gas planets rotate faster at equator than at poles?

From this site, it states that: The Sun spins faster at its equator than at its poles. I have also read somewhere that the gas giants (gaseous planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) also ...
6 votes
0 answers
194 views

What are the pros and cons of different types of echelle spectrograph cross-dispersers?

Echelle spectrographs, operating at high resolving power, typically consist of an echelle grating with a low numbers of lines/mm, used with high diffraction orders (often $n=$50-100). To separate the ...
6 votes
0 answers
119 views

Need help understanding stellar spectroscopy data from ESO

The European Southern Observatory webpage has a web page that has tabular spectrogram data from A. J. Pickles, University of Hawaii. There are over 130 .dat files there. Each one represents a ...
6 votes
0 answers
482 views

Linear limb darkening coefficient, u

I was wondering if anyone knew of any resources to understand the linear limb darkening coefficient, $u$. That is to say, how the $\theta$-dependent coefficient $u$ (or sometimes $b_{\nu}$) varies ...
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 ...
5 votes
0 answers
37 views

Help understanding ring diagram analysis used in helioseismology

I need help understanding something. In global helioseismology we study the modes directly (stationary waves characterized by 3 integers numbers: $n$, $l$ and $m$). As the angular degree $l$ becomes ...
5 votes
0 answers
457 views

Why does titanium oxide around Betelgeuse produce this particular sawtooth-shaped absorption spectrum?

Betelgeuse Just Isn’t That Cool: Effective Temperature Alone Cannot Explain the Recent Dimming of Betelgeuse suggests that the recent dimming might be caused by increased optical absorption by dust ...
5 votes
0 answers
100 views

Simulate earth, moon, sun constellation with dates

I would like to simulate the three object distance, specifically the distance of the moon to both, sun and earth for further investigation into tide prediction. What would be a good starting point ...
4 votes
0 answers
52 views

How does SDSS estimate photometric redshift of sources?

I'm looking through the data in SDSS DR 12: ...
4 votes
0 answers
54 views

What happens to the non-fusion formed metals in stars?

Let’s consider a population I star of some given metallicity. I know that depending on the type of star, different structures are possible with convection zones and radiative zones trading around ...
4 votes
0 answers
60 views

How are plage regions related to the density of medium and velocity FeII ions?

During a literature review (abstract), I found that the intensity of FeII (298.5 nm) ions in the last solar minimum was higher than the two previous solar minima 21 & 22. The velocity of FeII ions ...
4 votes
0 answers
72 views

Did astronomers "track back" solar wind switchbacks to the surface of the Sun to individual convection cells?

The new NASA Goddard video NASA's Parker Solar Probe Touches The Sun For The First Time explains that the spacecraft passed many times through "switchbacks" or kinks in the solar wind, where ...
4 votes
0 answers
81 views

From what distance could the Sun's planetary nebula be seen entirely with free eye?

When collapsing to a white dwarf, a red giant Sun would emit a planetary nebula. How far from the Sun would that nebula stretch at most? Also: At about what distance could you see the planetary nebula ...
4 votes
0 answers
66 views

What can Jupiter's spectrograph tell us other than its rotational velocity?

I have data of a Jupiter's image and the spectra of each pixel in the image, and I am playing around to see what I can do with it. I have managed to find Jupiter's rotational velocity by finding the ...
4 votes
0 answers
588 views

A simple echelle spectrograph for viewing solar spectrum

On the Astrosurf website here, someone has designed a deceptively simple echelle spectrograph for viewing solar spectrum. Briefly, light from an optical fiber falls on an echelle grating and which is ...

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