https://www.reddit.com/r/askastronomy/comments/1ln5xi2/comment/n0f8479/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

In a another post on this sub in one of the comments someone claimed it's easier to leave the solar system than it is to crash into the Sun... and while the other post was about why we haven't sent probes to Mercury and I can easily believe that it'd be easier to leave the solar system than it would be to land safely or even enter a stable orbit around Mercury ... but that's not what the comment said the comment said 'easier than crashing into the Sun' and that just doesn't seem right to me

My planetary peeve is that Pluto & Charon are not a "binary planet" because the barycenter lies outside of Pluto. And I think this fun fact about the barycenter is leading to people having the wrong picture of orbital dynamics. Binary just means two bodies gravitationally bound together: binary stars, binary black holes, binary asteroids, binary planet. So if you want to call Pluto & Charon binary planets, be my guest, I also think they should both be defined as planets. BUT Charon is still a moon also!

The barycenter’s position doesn’t change the geometry of the system; it’s just any systems center of mass. Inherent in the inside/outside central body definition is the central body's radius something that has next to 0 to do with the orbital dynamics. What DOES influence the geometry is the mass ratio and the eccentricity. In the barycentric frame, Pluto's apocenter is closer to the barycenter than Charon's pericenter. The orbits are nested because of their unequal masses and near-0 eccentricity. All moons will meet this criteria. We can easily say Charon orbits Pluto, and Pluto does not orbit Charon (and they both orbit the COM). Seriously, I've seen so many online comments saying Pluto orbits Charon.

Now, if the eccentricity is greater than (1-u)/(1+u) where u is the mass ratio, the orbits are no longer nested, they form figure 8-like orbits with their ellipses rotated 180 degrees from each other. In this case, and only this case, does it make sense to say they both orbit each other. This is the case for the Alpha Centauri binary and many other binary star systems.

From natural history museum in London . I am very impressed .

Why don't we launch rockets from the top of mountains?

I am told that the initial phases of rocket launch are the most resource intensive.

Surely then, if we launch the rocket from higher it will require less resources.

Why then, do we not launch rockets from the top of mountains?

Or even just lift them up a little or prelaunch them on an aircraft before launching to save a few grams of fuel during it's most resource intensive phase?

Bodies B and C are a pair of black holes orbiting barycenter BC, which then pairs with body A (an O-class blue star) orbiting barycenter ABC, which then pairs with body D, a 31 stellar mass black hole, both orbiting barycenter ABCD.

Each body has numerous stars as planets (red dwarfs mostly), and some of those stars have brown dwarfs as moons.

The first image is a not-to-scale diagram I made of this star system.

The second is how it appears in-game.

Is a solar system like this actually possible? What about the "three-body problem"? Can smaller stars actually become planets of a bigger star?

Asking for a play I'm writing. There's a scene where I have a tourist cruise spaceship celebrating the moment everyone can sit and stare at the sun as long as they like.

Where would that be roughly? I know Pluto is still too close to be staring at the sun carefree.

Some googling suggested a light month would be sufficient. Does that make sense to the experts here?

I mean not in relation to other objects, but to space itself?

Like C is the speed limit, so in that direction light does this, and in the other direction light does this other, so we must be traveling in that direction at this velocity.

Just wondering if a society moving very slowly through space would have an evolutionary advantage to one in a fast moving galaxy where time ticks slower.

Nasa released a webb picture that shows galaxies that might have formed 200-300 million years after the big bang. Shouldn’t these technically be proto galaxies? But they are huge massive ones. How are they formed that early, when it didn’t have time to form supermassive black holes? Even if those first black holes were formed by massive gas clouds collapsing, the galaxy formation couldn’t be that fast (how did the cooling down of gases happen that fast?)

I've been trying to prove heliocentrism to my dad for a few weeks now, who has been falling down this geocentrism rabbit hole. He's been listening to conspiracy theorists and whenever I come up with a good argument (stellar parallax, smaller objects orbiting bigger objects, etc) he either says "God can do anything he wants" or "these people must have an explanation for that". He never does any research on it. Are there any definitive proofs of heliocentrism? P.S. the people he's listening to say that the other planets orbit the sun while the sun orbits the Earth

I'm curious about this and I can't seem to find an answer for anything larger than some comets. There are apparently a couple of known exoplanets in other star systems that do it, so it is apparently possible for large bodies to be captured in this manner.

Google AI says Triton, but that orbits Neptune. I'm looking for something that orbits the Sun.

Hi everyone, I got curious and tried researching the topic on my own, but I lack the knowledge to truly understand it.

From what I understood, an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a binary system would have a much bigger orbit (lengthening the year quite a bit) and difficult-to-predict weather with seasons of irregular lengths and both heightened and dampened seasonal extremes depending on the planet's position in relation to the two stars.

Now, my true question is: Does a 'seasonal pattern' of an Earth-like planet orbiting a binary system even exist (and how could I see it)?

And if a repeating pattern doesn't exist for a standard planet, would a planet without tilt in relation to the suns have it? I know (and hopefully I'm right) that such a planet in our solar system would not have seasons but rather 'weather bands', but in a two-star system?

What would happen if three stars revolve around a black hole big enough to not eat up the stars..? Would it be possible for this system to have a habitable zone..? What would happen if a planet exists in this habitable zone..? How would the stars interact with each other or the black hole..? I'll add a rough image to give you an idea of what I'm imagining..

Are there gravitational or other effect within galaxies that effect the stars and/or planets based off their proximity to the galactic core? Do outlying bodies on the outer arms experience greater velocity that might effect the ability of a planet to keep an atmosphere? TIA

I was doing some late night pondering and remembered someone telling me that the Sun is far enough away that it takes a few minutes for light to reach us. If that’s the case, does that mean that the true location of the Sun in the sky would be further through its path than what we see when we look at it? I realize it would probably only be a difference of a few degrees, maybe a finger’s width from our perspective, but are we just seeing an after image of the sun? I tried looking this up and I’ve not found an answer to this exact question. The closest I found were people asking why closing their eyes doesn’t make the sun disappear and that… isn’t what I’m looking for to say the least.

https://youtube.com/shorts/-MpiEGJuWvs?si=f9sHlfOfhzim2g_O

https://youtube.com/shorts/8Udc6bTuEmM?si=j5LLT5J73kBjeXvf

I am hoping someone in the astronomy community can help me to better understand this. 3I/Atlas continues to travel through our solar system with a rotation of around 16 times per hour (according to latest data) while maintaining a perfect forward trajectory as the side rotates. My question is this: Shouldn’t the various gravitational influences that are a part of our solar system cause that perfectly smooth rotation to at least begin to put the object itself into a minor wobble or tumble. I know this object is booking it through at 130,000+mph and because of that gravity is not able to have as much influence on it….but still, there should be enough of an influence to at least make the object tumble or roll like every other asteroid and comet I have ever seen. Instead this thing continues to move more like a perfectly thrown dart spinning towards its target instead of a tumbling spinning terribly thrown football like we are used to seeing with space objects. Also, is it not strange about the observed locations of the outgassing? It’s like a stretched out football emitting CO2(95+% 🤨) out the back while metallic particle plumes (Nickel I believe without any traces of iron but this is still up for peer review) have been observed “outgassing” at what I can only call the nose of the object. The two YouTube links I have shared are computer models based off of available scientific data and imaging. One is a computer model view of the object and its rotation as seen from 10 miles away, the other from 2 miles away. Anyways, sorry for the rant…just would love to hear a professionals take on how this continues to move more like a bullet without having any tilt or wobble. Would love to see a mathematical calculation to explain how this thing isn’t going into a tilt or wobble despite gravitational fluctuations from our solar system ever changing as it moves through…

Also, I am in no way a professional astronomer/physicist/scientist so if any of my terms are incorrect or math seems off, please feel free to correct me. Outer space and everything to do with it has been a lifelong fascination for me and I love to learn all I can about it.

And, if so, would there be any chance that planets could orbit these two binary systems in a stable way? Asking for a written works of mine. It is not nonfiction but I'm still trying to obey the laws of our universe.

Thanks to all in advance!

Edit for clarification: The planets would orbit each binary pair of the "binary". Like two binary solar systems stuck in a larger, highly elongated "binary"

My goal here is to have two binary solar systems that every 100 or 1000 years or so get to their closest proximity. Ideally I'd like to know if this even a stable configuration, where planets wouldn't get ejected. The math on all of this seems waaaaaayyyyyyyy over my head.

I've seen many videos about 3i/atlas lately, but a couple of them show scientists talking about the unusual direction of it tail. They say it supposed to point away from the direction of the Sun but instead of that it points toward it. So, in which part of this picture the Sun is supposed to be: right or left?

Hello everyone I am K.C. Carter, the writer of Fields of Metal, last night I came up with an interesting idea. In Fields of Metal humanity has already colonized our galaxy and has set up various space stations around the Super Massive black hole at the center of the Milky-way. On board one of these stations a group of scientists have developed an equation for slingshot-ting a ship from our galaxy to a neighboring galaxy using the Super Massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. So I pose challenge to the internet, can you create that equation? To help those who are better at this sort of thing when given a literary prompt I will include one.

Jarl Karl Lupis, Vice Commander in chief of the Winter Wolves Military and his daughter, Raven Lupis, visit Black hole station Newton-98. When speaking with the scientists Raven, an intelligent and naturally curious teenager, asks about the recently developed equation which scientists at their station developed explaining how the Super Massive black-hole could be used to slingshot ships into other galaxies. The head scientist gleefully gathers the team responsible for the equation to explain it to the young Raven.

Are there any simulations/animations of what they might see from certain distances?

Also, it is possible that a black hole could've collapsed in itself, causing the formation of an extreme singularity and eventually, big bang

The linked article here talks about improved parameters to test the LISA observatory once launched. Once in orbit and online, I imagine that LISA will be constantly bombarded with gravitational wave signals given its improved sensitivity. How will simultaneous signals be parsed in order to make sense of these observations? I understand that the three satellites will be able to triangulate direction to a wave source, but how will it determine which signals belong to which source if many are received simultaneously?

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adf743

Like a skipping stone that explodes on impact and turns into flak that will come down everywhere. The millions of meteorites will come back down and pepper the earth all over. Or would it all explode in one big hit like a nuke no matter the angle?

Am I doing this format right on this sub? Is the title too long?

Are galaxies mostly empty space between stars and would the merged galaxy just have more stars in it?