# Astronomy

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 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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

Newton realized that two bodies orbit around a common center of mass, rather than one round the other. He therefore modified Kepler's 3rd Law to: (m1 + m2) P^2 = (d1 + d2)^3 = R^3 where R is the...

Latest answer posted November 23, 2009 12:34 am 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

I once read from a college textbook on astronomy published in the 1880's that the Solar System was composed of 4 small rocky planets, surrounded by 4 large gas giant planets. With our current...

Latest answer posted February 20, 2010 12:13 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

It is a highly ambitious dream to follow, but never lose hope. There are opportunities aplenty for budding astronomers, as the field of astronomy is a relatively young one and thus, has thousands...

Latest answer posted October 2, 2013 7:28 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

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

Astronomy

The Martian Year can be expressed either in Earth Days (It takes 686.9726 Earth days for Mars to complete an orbit of the Sun.) But the Martian Day is different also, about 24 (Earth) hours and...

Latest answer posted December 8, 2008 6:52 am UTC

Astronomy

The Auroras on Earth are caused by particles streaming from the Sun, interacting with Earth's magnetic field, which concentrates these energetic particles (ions), which in turn interact with the...

Latest answer posted November 25, 2008 3:22 am UTC

Astronomy

Around 1859 the German chemists Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff began to examine the light generated when elements were heated to incandescence. By passing that light through a...

Latest answer posted May 15, 2009 3:57 am UTC

Astronomy

The constellation known as The Little Dipper is part of a larger constellation known as Ursa Minor, or The Little Bear. It possesses the star Polaris in the very end of it's handle. Polaris is...

Latest answer posted February 1, 2012 2:29 am 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

The color of a star helps to indicate the age of the star by reflecting the type of element that is burning in the nuclear reactions within the star. A red star is one that has burned all of the...

Latest answer posted July 3, 2012 1:26 am UTC

Astronomy

The asteroid is a perfect sphere so the perimeter is given by P = 2 pi r  where r  is the radius of the sphere. The landing craft is 10km due 'North' of the drilled hole. Where 'North' is...

Latest answer posted October 5, 2015 5:15 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

Stars are made in nebulae, not from them. A nebula is a thick cloud of dust and gas in space. As the particles of the nebula swirl around, they may bump into each other. Because every object in the...

Latest answer posted February 19, 2012 12:59 am UTC

Astronomy

It isn't that Pluto died per se. Instead, Pluto is what it always has been—or at least, what it has been for millions, perhaps billions, of years. It's a small, rocky, planetoid. What happened was,...

Latest answer posted November 18, 2008 7:46 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

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

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

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 question of who invented the first calendar is very hard to answer -- no one knows for sure. Many ancient societies had them. The Egyptians are, however, credited with the first solar...

Latest answer posted October 21, 2009 11:12 am UTC

Astronomy

Gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the center of gravity of a mass. In theory, there is no "cutoff" or "horizon" where the gravitational...

Latest answer posted June 10, 2009 7:16 am UTC

Astronomy

In a manner of speaking, virtually all stars are variable; their values change throughout their lives according to the patterns and influences of their components and environments. The Sun, for...

Latest answer posted January 14, 2014 5:51 am 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