Questions tagged [astronomy]
Science dealing with the study of space and celestial bodies. Can pertain to the composition, origin, motion, behavior or physical aspects of bodies in space as well as the practical applications of such information (ie: navigation).
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Can the US flags on the Moon be seen by terrestrial telescopes?
Telescope manufacturer, Celestron, claims on their blog:
Can we directly see the flags on the Moon with an Earthbound telescope?
The answer is no. The largest of the American flags on the Moon is the ...
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Can we determine for sure if the Sun revolves around the Earth?
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was the most recent (and final) rebbe of Chabad.
In 1975 he published a series of correspondence with a scientist about whether the Sun revolves around the Earth and ...
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Did the Qur'an predict an expanding universe 1300 years before Edwin Hubble?
There is a verse in the Qur'an that goes:
The heavens, We have built them with might. And verily, We are expanding it (51:47)
Some Islamic scholars say that this is an indication of the universe ...
user66632
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Do recent images from the JWST pose a major crisis for Big Bang cosmology?
In some recent publications, plasma physicist and alternative cosmology advocate Eric Lerner has made the claim that recent JWST images disprove the conventional ΛCDM model of cosmological inflation, ...
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Did Betelgeuse explode on August 7, 2022?
This widely watched live stream claims to show the Betelgeuse supernova in progress. But I can't find any information elsewhere
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Will Earth drift outside of the Goldilocks zone in the next half-billion years?
According to American actor Terrence Howard in his address at the Oxford Union Society:
Our planet is moving away from our sun at six inches a year [...] 15 centimeters a year our planet is pushing ...
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Did an asteroid impact in 2000 cause widespread power outages in Yukon, Canada?
A number of sources on the Internet claim that an asteroid impact in 2000 caused widespread power outages in Yukon, Canada. For example, according to the German-language Wikipedia page for the small ...
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Does Kasardevi, India, have an enormous geomagnetic field because of the Van Allen Belt?
An online magazine says this about Kasardevi:
What makes the place what it is, is its positioning on the earth’s Van Allen Belt. Simply put, the region surrounding the Kasar Devi Temple has an ...
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Is phosphine evidence of life on Venus?
This news article came out about evidence tied to the possibility of life on Venus. The crux of the evidence is the detection of phosphine. The claim is that we only know of two ways to make this ...
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Was Thales the first to show that the year contained 365 days?
The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, in his 2004 book A New History of Western Philosophy v. 1, Ancient Philosophy claims that Thales of Miletus, an ancient Greek astronomer, was
the first to show ...
user55893
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Does the asteroid 16 Psyche contain this much gold?
Some days ago, I read in several news sources [1][2][3] about an asteroid called 16 Psyche that is made up of precious metals such as gold and platinum. It's estimated worth is about $700 quintillion -...
user36020
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Was credit for the black hole image misattributed?
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) was used to create an image of Messier 87*, a supermassive black hole in the Messier 87 galaxy. This result has been heavily reported in the media leading up to its ...
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Does General Relativity bring "Cosmic Time," which is the same for all frames-of-reference?
In a recent podcast, the philosopher William Lane Craig said that while Special Relativity taught us to doubt whether any given clock is, or whether it could be, an absolute measure of time, General ...
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Was Kepler's sci-fi book "Somnium" used as evidence in his mother's witchcraft trial?
Widely considered the first sci-fi book, Somnium was written by astronomer Johannes Kepler around 1608 and was only published in 1634, after his death.
I first heard the claim that the book was used ...
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Is this animation showing the moon's librations a real capture or generated?
In one of the answers to an entertaining question on Physics.SE about "simple check for the global shape of the earth", there is a link to this awesome demonstration of the libration of the moon:
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