# Astronomy

Astronomy

The phases of the Moon are due to the movement of the Moon around the Earth. As the Moon revolves around the Earth different phases are seen. One important thing to note here is that for the phases...

Latest answer posted February 24, 2011, 1:53 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The sun has zero moons. A moon is a natural satellite of a planet, a dwarf planet, or even an asteroid. The sun is not one of those items. The sun is a star, and stars do not have moons; however,...

Latest answer posted March 14, 2018, 10:58 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The star nearest to the Earth is the Sun. It is 92 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers away from the Earth. This distance is also known as an astronomical unit or AU. The time taken by light...

Latest answer posted May 9, 2011, 12:14 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Nicolaus Copernicus is not famous for his contributions to reproductive science, but rather for his contributions to ASTRONOMY. (Although he did work as a physician for a time, studying medicine,...

Latest answer posted January 23, 2014, 9:41 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The Doppler Effect is evidence that the universe is expanding. When stars or galaxies are moving away from us, we see their color as red shifted. Because the distant galaxies are red shifted, this...

Latest answer posted October 22, 2008, 1:29 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The sun is classified as a G2 star with a temperature of 5780 K. This makes the color white with a red tint when seen in space, but on Earth, since the sun's light must travel through miles of...

Latest answer posted January 5, 2009, 6:53 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Actually, the recently retired space shuttle line of space vehicles never landed on the moon. The lunar landings were conducted between 1969 and 1972 with the Apollo missions. The space shuttle...

Latest answer posted November 28, 2012, 2:44 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Even though the Sun is much farther away from the Earth than the Moon, it exerts a stronger gravitational pull because it is so huge. However, the sun exerts a smaller tidal influence on Earth...

Latest answer posted February 1, 2009, 3:56 am (UTC)

Astronomy

According to the enotes dictionary, the definition of a system is that it is "A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole" The concept of a system is...

Latest answer posted February 3, 2009, 12:51 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The first part of this question has been thoroughly answered. However, the second part comes from an incorrect premise. We can live on other planets. It's just that we need a very large amount of...

Latest answer posted July 9, 2014, 1:02 am (UTC)

Astronomy

A lot of scientists believe that the major example of how this happened was the asteroid impact that (many believe) had a lot to do with the extinction of the dinosaurs. The way this works is...

Latest answer posted March 10, 2010, 12:58 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Venus has an atmosphere that is 96% carbon dioxide. The heat is trapped in the atmosphere, it can't escape to allow for the plant to cool naturally. As the Sun heats up the surface, that heat is...

Latest answer posted August 30, 2008, 9:48 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The planets in our Solar System can be generally divided into two different groups, the terrestrial planets and the gas giants. The terrestrial planets are closer to the Sun and consist of...

Latest answer posted July 25, 2013, 1:09 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Astronomical Units (AU) and Light-Years (ly) are both measurements of distance, generally used to show large amounts of distance between points. Light-years are better suited for calculating the...

Latest answer posted January 10, 2012, 8:35 am (UTC)

Astronomy

This is true; Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. There are several reasons for this reclassification, and for why Pluto was originally considered a planet. Pluto was considered a...

Latest answer posted January 14, 2014, 4:49 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

There are nine different stages that a star must pass through before being “born.” The first stage is when a nebula collects and makes a mass of gas and dust then it begins to contract under its...

Latest answer posted February 4, 2009, 9:34 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The most commonly accepted theory on the formation of the universe is what is known as "the Big Bang" theory. Many astronomers believe that the origins of the universe began with the concentration...

Latest answer posted May 20, 2013, 12:29 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Celestial distances are huge, so it really is amazing that we can measure the distance between Earth and another far-off celestial body. One method of doing this is to use parallax. Parallax uses...

Latest answer posted May 3, 2019, 12:32 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Astronomy should be studied by mankind because our survival is directly linked to the cosmos. The Earth is heated by its nearest star, the Sun, and its ocean tides are directly connected to its...

Latest answer posted September 4, 2013, 2:55 am (UTC)

Astronomy

There is overwhelming physical evidence that the universe is changing. The debate among astronomers is over whether the universe is expanding, a completely different question. The universe is...

Latest answer posted May 17, 2013, 11:59 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The bad news is the Milky Way galaxy is going to collide with the Andromeda galaxy (also referred to as M31). The good is that it will not occur for four billion more years. What this means in...

Latest answer posted May 18, 2013, 12:39 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Both Black holes and neutron stars are product of a dying star. When a star dies, it spent all of its energy and then collapses. Their difference lies on their parent star. For the purpose of this...

Latest answer posted October 31, 2012, 11:11 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The origin of celestial bodies like the stars and the planets is from large clouds of gases called nebulae. There are no forces acting within or between celestial bodies that makes them rotate....

Latest answer posted December 10, 2010, 10:00 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Using the stars to tell time is actually very complicated (much more difficult than using the sun or the moon). Whereas using the sun to denote time is relatively simple (when the sun is directly...

Latest answer posted June 22, 2012, 9:35 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

I think most people would be surprised to find out that the most volcanically active body in the solar system is actually one of Jupiter's moons, Io. It has more than 400 volcanoes, and the amount...

Latest answer posted November 3, 2011, 9:07 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Some of the options provided are completely false, others are true, but were not discovered by Newton. Newton's discovery was D, that gravity is a universal phenomenon. While it is true that all...

Latest answer posted November 22, 2009, 10:35 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Saturn is a fascinating planet and very mysterious even though scientists have been studying it closely for hundreds of years. Christiaan Huygens discovered the first known moon of Saturn in the...

Latest answer posted November 14, 2017, 7:46 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The answer to the question is A. While it is true that there are large impact craters all over the world and the Earth's magnetic poles have reversed several times over the course of geological...

Latest answer posted March 20, 2013, 3:49 am (UTC)

Astronomy

We still don't have a definitive answer to this, and we may never know for certain. There are so many variables involved, and this all happened so long ago, that important evidence may have been...

Latest answer posted November 17, 2013, 6:18 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The period of a planet orbiting a round a star, for example, the Sun, relates to th=e radius of the orbit according to the third Kepler's Law: T^2 = (4pi^2)/(GM) a^3 Here, T is the period of the...

Latest answer posted September 9, 2015, 11:29 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

1. It doesn't make sense for galaxies to be the oldest observable objects; galaxies are composed of gas, dust and stars, all of which interact with electromagnetic radiation that we can detect. At...

Latest answer posted January 14, 2014, 5:39 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Saturn has a considerable diversity of moons. Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system (Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest). It is larger and more massive than our own moon and the...

Latest answer posted January 18, 2014, 1:30 am (UTC)

Astronomy

In astronomy, a parallax refers to the angular distance between a celestial body and the observation point at earth's surface. Since we see the celestial body up in the sky, we measure the distance...

Latest answer posted February 5, 2015, 7:36 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The force exerted by the moon on the Earth is 2.98 x 10^31 joules. The gravitational force exerted by the Earth on the Sun is 3.58 x 10^23 joules These figures are derived by using the following...

Latest answer posted November 23, 2009, 11:28 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Earth's temperature would not change considerably in either scenario, as these rays produced by the sun do not reach the Earth's surface due to the planet's thick atmosphere. The sun's corona...

Latest answer posted May 26, 2017, 11:39 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

First, of all the planets around the Sun, the Earth has, through the laws of physics, maintained an atmosphere. This atmosphere serves two specific purposes in sustaining life. First, it protects...

Latest answer posted November 2, 2012, 10:05 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The brightness that we see is related to two factors: how much brighter one star is than another and how much closer one is than another. The brightness decreases by the square of the distance....

Latest answer posted June 11, 2010, 1:40 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The sun doesn't exactly "create" energy. We should be careful to remember the law of conservation of energy: energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. However, they can be "converted" from...

Latest answer posted July 1, 2014, 10:53 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Be careful to understand the difference between a planet's rotation, orbit, and retrograde motion. These are different things. If you look down on the solar system from the direction of the North...

Latest answer posted November 25, 2008, 2:45 am (UTC)

Astronomy

National Geographic's 2011 docudrama When Aliens Attack is as much a work of science fiction as it is a documentary. That means that, while much of the details incorporated into the film are...

Latest answer posted June 21, 2017, 1:19 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The most commonly believed theory on this among scientists is what is known as the "big bang" theory. This idea holds that the universe was created by a huge explosion. The universe, according to...

Latest answer posted February 3, 2010, 12:12 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

When observing planetary motion with respect to the stars that are located very far away and can be considered stationary, a few unusual things are observed. One of them is retrograde motion. The...

Latest answer posted December 8, 2010, 10:35 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

The angular diameter of an object is the size of the object expressed as an angular measurement when it is viewed from a particular spot. If an object is at a distance D from the point it is being...

Latest answer posted September 16, 2015, 4:58 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Comets have tails (two of them, in fact) because of stuff coming off the comet's core. One of the tails is made of dust. The other tail is made of gasses. Both of these tails point more or less...

Latest answer posted March 10, 2010, 1:04 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

No one knows. New moons are discovered around the outer planets with fair regularity, the most recent of which was a fourth moon of Pluto's Please note that there have also been new planets...

Latest answer posted February 18, 2012, 9:18 am (UTC)

Astronomy

Any formula to calculate the moon phase accurately for all time is deceptively complex! What follows is a simplification; the formula is accurate within 2 days for any date 2000-2009:1) Total the...

Latest answer posted December 18, 2008, 6:05 am (UTC)

Astronomy

The Dark Rift in the Milky Way galaxy is what runs down the middle of the Milky Way. Many clouds of star dust run the middle of the galaxy and block the light of the stars in that area. The cold...

Latest answer posted December 4, 2009, 4:27 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Gravity is the longest range force that comprise our Universe, and is a property of matter, so where there's matter, there's gravity. On Earth we experience it as the phenomenon of "falling...

Latest answer posted December 12, 2008, 11:56 pm (UTC)

Astronomy

Question one regards barycentric coordinates. The center of mass in the Sun-Earth relationship is not at the center of either body; it is a sort of average between the two. I can tell you without...

Latest answer posted January 16, 2014, 7:46 pm (UTC)