The solar-system tag has no wiki summary.
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What is 656 Beagle?
What kind of object is 656 Beagle (1908BU)?
I know it's a minor planet, but that includes a large array of different stuff. Specifically, I am looking at the general chemistry/geology of the object.
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Solar distillation plant output [closed]
A $100 m^2 $solar distillation plant is set-up in Nadi. The insolation in Nadi is about
20 MJ m$^{-2}$ per day. The latent heat of evaporation of water is 2.4 MJ/kg and the
specific heat is $4.2 kJ ...
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Properties of gravity
If all objects in the solar system suddenly went cold to the core, including the Sun, would it gravity play any different role? I guess what i am trying to ask, is there any relation between energy ...
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What is the simplest way to prove the Earth is round?
Assume you've come in contact with a tribe of people cut off from the rest of the world, or you've gone back in time several thousand years, or (more likely) you've got a numbskull cousin.
How would ...
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Has martian sunset same spectra than this earthly bluish-violet sunset?
Has martian sunset same spectra than this earthly bluish-violet sunset?
What about sunset on Mercury?
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How do you calculate the Milky Way’s galactic year? [closed]
The Solar system moves at a speed of 220 km / s around the galaxy. It’s about 27,000 light years from the Galactic Centre. How long does it take for the solar system to orbit around the Milky Way?
...
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Earth and Moon computer simulation [closed]
So I want to simulate the solar system but want to start simple with one orbiting body.
However, I never did anything like this before and was wondering if anyone here could give me some hints.
...
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How reliant is the Solar System on being exactly the way it is?
We know that all objects with mass exert forces on all other objects of mass such that
$$ F = \frac{GMm}{R^2}.$$
And as others have discussed the planets do interfere with each other ...
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Mercury's Orbital Precession in Special Relativity
I am researching Mercury's orbital precession. I have considered most perturbations and general relativity. I am still not satisfied. I need your help.
I need a solution to Exercise 13, Chapter 6, in ...
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Could Voyager 1 have entered a solar radiation belt?
We currently believe that the Sun has no radiation belts because the unstable magnetic field, which turns every 11 years, is not stable enough to sustain a solar radiation belt. But observations from ...
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What are the facts that allow accepting the Oort cloud theory?
I admit without any fact that the Oort cloud (comet reservoir) should exist, and it seems to be accepted by far by the large majority of astronomers.
But it is still a theory without any direct ...
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Rømer's determination of the speed of light
I am trying to understand Rømer's determination of the speed of light ($c$). The geometry of the situation is shown in the image below. The determination involves measuring apparent fluctuations in ...
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Why do we always see the same side of the Moon?
I am puzzled why we always see the same side of the Moon even though it is rotating around its own axis apart from revolving around the earth. Shouldn't this only be possible if the Moon is not ...
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Has anyone on Earth ever seen the dark side of the moon and if so where are the pictures? [duplicate]
If the Moon rotates then we should see the dark side right? But as far as I know the Moon only shows one side to Earth, how can this be if it is rotating?
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Why Aren't Saturn's Rings Clumping into Moons?
While reading with my son about how a Mars-like planet collided with the early Earth that resulted in our current moon, it said the initial debris also formed a ring, but that ring ended up getting ...
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Why are Saturn's rings so thin?
Take a look at this picture (from APOD http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110308.html):
I presume that rocks within rings smash each other. Below the picture there is a note which says that Saturn's rings ...
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4answers
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Staying in orbit - but doesn't any perturbation start a positive feedback?
I am not a physicist; I am a software engineer. While trying to fall asleep recently, I started thinking about the following.
There are many explanations online of how any object stays in orbit. The ...
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4answers
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Why a day is divided by 12/24 hours? Why the number 12?
Why a day is divided by 12/24 hours? Why the number 12? Why not using 10 or 6 or 14, 16? Who invented this? Any physical reasons behind this?
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What did general relativity clarify about Mercury?
I frequently hear that Kepler, using his equations of orbital motion, could predict the orbits of all the planets to a high degree of accuracy -- except Mercury. I've heard that mercury's motion ...
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How long does it take for radio or light waves to travel from Earth to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto?
I know it roughly takes 20 minutes from Earth to Mars, and 8 minutes from the Sun to Earth, but don't know how long for the other planets on my list.
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Planets motion around the sun [duplicate]
Why planets of solar system move almost in the same plane?
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3answers
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Can the solar system really fit in a thimble?
Almost every time somebody talks about atoms, at some point they mention something like this:
If we remove the spaces between the atoms and atomic components, we can fit the solar system in a ...
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1answer
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Where do planets get energy to revolve around sun?
We know that every planet in our solar system revolve's around the sun in a particular orbit. But were to they get the energy to revolve around the sun. And why do they not drop into the sun there is ...
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What is the irregularity in Uranus' orbit that is caused by Neptune?
I carefully read the Wikipedia article Discovery of Neptune, and I don't get what the irregularity of Uranus orbit was that lead to the discovery of Neptune. Years ago, I watched some educational film ...
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Why do we say that the earth moves around the sun?
In history we are taught that the Catholic Church was wrong, because the Sun does not move around the Earth, instead the Earth moves around the Sun.
But then in physics we learn that movement is ...
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How does the earth move?
My son who is 5 years old is asking me a question about how the earth moves around the sun. What answer should I give him?
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Why does Venus transit so slowly?
I have calculated that because Venus is $d = 12,103.6~\mathrm{km}$ in diameter and moves at $v = 35.02~\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$, it would take
$$ t=\frac{d}{v} = ...
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Are Uranus and Neptune too big for their location?
So I was watching some TV, and I heard Dr. Plait mention that the planets Uranus and Neptune are too big to be located so far out in our solar system. Now, I heard his explanation on the show as to ...
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Why does the debris from comets and former comets hang around so long?
So tonight's Quatrantids shower got me thinking. Why does the debris from comets and former comets hang around so long? Each year the earth sweeps through the region of space that the comet went ...
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What is the fate of the asteroid belt?
From what I understand the asteroid belt never formed into a planet because Jupiter threw off the gravity of all the small objects and they never could gather to form a planet. As described here: Why ...
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How does a comet form?
As the title explains,
How does a comet form?
What are the elements, what is a comet composed of?
Why didn't they become part of planets, moons or asteroids?
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How plausible is a subsurface ocean on Pluto?
According to this article on physorg.com, it's likely that Pluto has a subsurface ocean of liquid water. It suggests that the ocean would be about 165 km deep, under an equally deep crust of solid ...
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When will Enceladus run out of water?
So its geyser eruptions are the primary source of water in Saturn's atmosphere (from this thread). And they even manage to contaminate Titan's atmosphere with it.
But has the outgassing rate ...
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Are the inner planets on planar orbits because there was more dust in the inner solar system (early on in planetary accretion)?
Question inspired by a question thread here.
So when there's lots of dust in a galaxy, the galaxy tends to collapse into a spiral galaxy (to maintain angular momentum and to minimize gravitational ...
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Distribution of each element and molecule as a function of distance from the Sun and as a function of time
Are there any graphs that show the distribution of each element and molecule as a function of distance from the Sun?
And maybe even the time-evolution of each distribution over the solar system's ...
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At what temperature does water become a liquid on Mars? On the asteroids? And in a vacuum?
I know that I can just read off the phase diagram for water (for the surface atmospheric pressure on each object). But could there possibly be some nuances that someone might miss just from viewing ...
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Vesta dwarf planet status
Now that we have close-up photos of Vesta, which the IAU had previously said was a candidate dwarf planet, when is the IAU going to decide the issue? Personally, Vesta doesn't look round enough to me.
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Could Jupiter's gravity destabilize Earth's artificial satellites over a long timescale?
Could Jupiter's gravity destabilize Earth's artificial satellites over a long timescale?
After all, it can destabilize Mercury's orbit, and it can also destabilize orbits in the asteroid belt.
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Why did the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter form as it did?
I'm curious about why the asteroid belt wasn't pulled by Mars's or Jupiter's gravity or formed into either moons or planets. Why did it form into an asteroid belt instead?
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How to calculate linar velocity of planet orbit?
I try to simulate a solar system with planets (with random mass) placed randomly around a sun with a mass $X \times \text{solar mass}$.
The simulation is going well when I use real data ...
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Are orbits interior to Jupiter's orbit less stable than orbits exterior to Jupiter's orbit?
Or in other words, are there differences in average Lyapunov timescale between orbits interior to Jupiter and orbits exterior to Jupiter? I'm trying to answer a question at ...
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Planet's Moon attrated by sun [closed]
I'm currently writing a code to generate solar system and $N$ number of planets / moons.
I use real data to test (earth / sun / moon data).
I succeeded in placing the earth and make it orbit around ...
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1answer
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Relationship between Mars and Earth rotation
Is it by pure random chance that Mars and the Earth have nearly the same day duration (Mars day is barely 40 minutes longer, which is just 3% difference), or there is some causal relationship between ...
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Why did the ancients fail to discover that the Earth orbits the Sun?
The ancients observed that the Sun and the 'fixed' stars rotated about the Earth. They were also aware that the Earth was spherical. They performed many astronomical measurements on the planets - ...
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What is the average distance between objects in our asteroid belt?
We've all seen scifi movies with asteroid belts that require "great skill" to fly through, but how dense is the asteroid belt really?
How much of the belt could you see from the surface of a given ...
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1answer
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Where to find the current positions and velocities of the planets?
I've written a program which simulates the motions of planets and other bodies. I'd like to run it on our own solar system, but to do so I need to know the current positions (preferably in ...
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Observing Jupiter's non-Galilean moons
What strength of telescope is required to observe some of the non-Galilean moons of Jupiter?
My current telescope at 50 magnification resolves the Galilean moons well, but I'm guessing it's far ...
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Ways of verifying the origin of a meteorite?
Assume you have a small sliver of a lunar or martian meteorite (or an object asserted to be so).
Without using any special scientific equipment, is it possible to verify (or give a high probability) ...
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Can any telescope be used for solar observing?
Can any telescope, such as a 8" reflector, that is normally used at night to look at planets be used or adapted for solar observing?
What kind of adapters or filters are required or is it better to ...
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Does a celestial system exhibit a collective magnetic field?
Sol exhibits a magnetic field, most of the planets in orbit around Sol exhibit a magnetic field - strong and weak both.
Does the solar system as a whole exhibit a magnetic field?
Does the paradigm ...
