Questions tagged [astronomy]
For questions related to planets, moons, stars and other celestial objects, and their motion on the sky.
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Habitable moon of a gas giant: working out the sizes and distances
I am attempting to create fictional, stable P-Type binary system, featuring a gas giant in a stable orbit, with a habitable Earth-like moon. “Is a Jupiter-sized planet plausible in a habitable zone?” ...
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Is it physically possible for a planet to have seasons of different lengths?
Those of you who have read Game Of Thrones will know that in the GOT world seasons do not have a fixed duration, e.g., a winter might last three times longer than the previous one.
I find most ...
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Can a planet survive a supernova?
The Sun has nowhere near enough mass to enter the branch of stellar evolution that would lead to a supernova, fortunately for us. However, there are planets that orbit stars that are destined to go ...
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Could life form in outer space?
All life we know of to date (presumably) formed on a rocky planet (more precisely: earth). Fiction has been written about life in more exotic locations. Though as far as I know, these lifeforms were ...
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What would the sky look like from the surface of a planet with rings?
What would a planet's rings look like from the surface of that planet?
Would the rings be perceived to be stationary or move across the sky, and would the alignment of the rings relative to the axis ...
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Detecting a neutron star entering the solar system
In its wandering through the Milky Way, the solar system is getting close to a solitary neutron star.
The neutron star will "fly by" above the plane of the ecliptic and its closest distance from the ...
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How would an astronaut conclude he's on Earth, but 600 million years in the future?
Say we have a group of space travelers who have been frozen inside a sleeper ship for an enormous amount of time that left when Earth was recognizable. When they thaw out and reach their destination, ...
user38070
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What Factors Could Cause a World to See "Northern" Lights Much Closer to the Equator?
I'm currently designing a world where the inhabitants see the Aurora Borealis on an almost nightly basis almost all the way to the equator. The lights are so strong they rarely see the stars beyond.
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What impact is required for a visible (from Earth) ejecta plume on Earth's Moon, and would the Moon survive?
Take the Earth-Moon system as we know it. Now, something causes a large rock to be lobbed in the direction of our moon. Exactly how that happens is deliberately left unspecified; it could be ...
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Can I keep our universe, but without the speed limit (of light)?
It seems like nothing can move faster than light and this is quite bothersome for interstellar travel. It takes decades in the best case to get anywhere interesting in our little Milkyway (Many ...
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Can a planet realistically have multiple suns?
Several science fiction books I have read (including, IINM, Nightfall by Asimov) have featured planets with several suns. Some worlds where this happened wrought interesting effects on the inhabitants ...
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How deep can the ocean plausibly be?
I want to have planet with as deep an ocean as plausibly possible. How deep can I go given these restrictions?
Planet must be in habitable zone of a star
Generally, planet should support life
Size of ...
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Is it safe to orbit HDE 226868?
I'm considering a story where an exploration is devised to explore a binary system containing a black hole; the choice is Cygnus X-1, with its companion supergiant star HDE 226868. It would likely be ...
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Earth-like Moon around the Gas Giant. Eclipse length?
Worldbuilder in dire need!
I'm trying to figure out the eclipse length of a habitable Earth-like moon that is rotating around a gas giant. The story that I work on is centered on the Earth-like moon, ...
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By what mechanism could a planet be locked into permanent solar eclipse?
I've got an image in my head of a world where it's just normal that the star is black with a golden halo around it - in other words, where the planet is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse.
Are ...
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