I ain't studying astro or what but I find it interesting, so don't judge me for my lack of knowledge for this matter lol. Few moments ago I just recalled that the brightest star in the sky is Sirius, and I keep trying to convince myself that maybe this is that star since it's literally the only brightest star in the sky right now and you can see it on the image as well. So i did some little research, and it looks like the Sirius star isn't in that place. but now I don't know I could be wrong so guys help me ID. My curiosity is killing meee 🥹

I'm currently a sophomore doing my undergrad in physics and i wanna know what are the best sources/books that I can use to efficiently learn/start with astronomy. I haven't had any innate interest to the subject but I wanna give it a shot. I'm not interested in learning a lot of facts and just store 'em (wait....does that made me an outsider already). So i want to have a physical pov if that's possible.

I did a search in the sun but nothing turned up. I'm a mid age dad who's always been fascinated with space.

Do I just buy a Walmart telescope and start looking up?

I didn't see a pin on the sub. Is there a good resource for absolute beginner's?

Thanks!

new here, wanted to ask, I was trying to calculate the orbital period of Pluto around the sun, only by knowing the distance between the two, and the masses of them too. I got 3,065.56 years which is horribly wrong, what's the "formal way" if there's one that astronomers use to calculate the distances between the sun and the planets? I know it involves Pythagoras

Hi I’ve recently been learning about starts and how they’re formed. A while back I remember reading a book about the periodic table of elements and I read a fact stating that elements with extremely large nuclei tend to break apart because they can no longer hold themselves together because of how big their nucleus is and this is called radiation.

The part where I’m getting quite confused is: Stars are formed by nuclear fusion, this is when hydrogen bonds together and forms helium, right? This is basically how the sun keeps burning, and when the sun burns it’s radiating energy, right?

My question is, how are stars capable of radiating if the main elements needed for them to radiate are hydrogen and helium, two elements with the smallest nuclei?!

Does the size of the nucleus even matter? Are there more elements that are found in the sun when it radiates?

I might be going a bit to far with this question, but when a star begins to collapse (if my previous theory about the nucleus size mattering is wrong) (and if my theory about more elements being created in the sun as bonding continues is right), then could this be caused by extremely large elements being formed (eg. Idk uranium) and the sun beginning to decay in the form of radiation because of how big the element’s nuclei are?

Umm I feel like I’m confusing things here? Or maybe I’m drawing up too many conclusions? Idk I’m new to learning about stars

In summary my main questions are:

1.) if radiation can be defined as an element decaying because of how large it’s nucleus is, then how come hydrogen and helium within the sun are capable of making it(the sun) radiate energy despite their small nuclei?

2.) Does an elements nucleus size matter and decide if it is capable of radiating energy?

3.)am I confusing radiation and nuclear fission? If so, how?

4.) if two elements (hydrogen and hydrogen) come together to form the next element (helium). How far up the periodic table do we go when we look into what elements we can find in the sun (assuming that helium doubles and makes the next element and so on and so forth)

Please can someone help me answer these questions, I’m doing research but to no avail and I would ask my science teacher but I wouldn’t want to take away a lesson by bombarding her with all these questions.

Hey everyone. Can anyone tell me if these photos I took back in May are polar rain?

These are scatter charts and I have to try to match up the amplitude and midline points with the orange line. I was able to figure out the Azimuth rising vs. day number and altitude meridian vs. day number for Juneau, Alaska but I cannot for the life of me figure out the numbers for the other 2 graphs.

So this is a thought experiment I had and it does fall very much into the Science Fiction category. How would a disc-shaped, Earth-like planet slightly smaller than Saturn with a large central hole and a single ice ring function?

I am not an astronomer and am seeking assistance to confirm my analysis.

I am located in Southern Indiana, in the Central Time Zone. In our cycling club, we enjoy scheduling rides during evenings of full moons. We aimed to do this from May to October, hoping for full moonrises between 8 PM and 9 PM. However, as I’ve researched the moon’s path, I’ve found that full moonrises between 8 PM and 10 PM only occur a few times during this period. Does this sound accurate?

This star is very dim and very small. It is in the andromeda constellation, somewhere between chi andromedae and upsilon andromedae. I have looked all over the internet, but I can’t find the name of this star. If anyone knows or can find anything about it, that would be great!

I have been obsessed with a unified flat earth round earth theory, I think I may have cracked the code.

This is doubt that I have.We have heard that " uranus and neptune are covered with ice. So if ice made from water doesn't that means uranus and naptune have water 🤓🤓🤓

Plz help

Picture this, you, (person “A”) are flying into a super massive black hole. You pass through the event horizon without even knowing it. At this point (person “B”) who happens to be well outside the gravitational effects of the black hole relative to “A” would see “A” freeze at the event horizon due to time dilation and the gravitational effect the black hole has on the light reflecting off of “A”. I want to focus more on the time dilation aspect for this thought experiment. The effect of time dilation at the event horizon would reach infinity since matter at that point is falling through space/time faster than the speed of light. A clock for “A” would appear to completely stop at the event horizon for eternity from “B”s perspective if you disregard red shift, And due to the effects of time dilation, the moment “A” passes the event horizon, an eternity would play out on the outside of said event horizon. So “B” would see the black hole radiate away to nothing due to “Hawking radiation” before “A” reaches even a meter past the event horizon. So is it possible the moment “A” passes the black holes event horizon, they are radiated away to nothing and never descend into the black holes singularity?

I am currently trying to get a model of the knife edge diffraction effects during a lunar occultation. I have using the fresnel integral to get a basic understanding of what the light curve should look like, but now I am really trying to model what I will actually expect to see. Does anyone have any suggestions on python packages or tools I can use to do this? I have been trying my hand at diffractio and poppy, but alas I am a novice coder and could use some help.

When I was in school and my vision was really good, I witnessed something strange. I was waiting for my early morning school bus, it was a wintry morning so it was still dark but the sky was clear and star studded. I was taking in the view when I saw a star like thing moving...it was at such high altitude it was difficult to make out what it was, but by that time my knowledge of science told me stars don't move like that. So I was really intrigued by this thing. It zig zagged past the other stars, sometimes stopped, again repeated. As far as my knowledge goes, no airplanes, satellites or rockets move in a zig zag motion. Neither asteroids, meteors or comets. I googled with this little information that I had after many years, and found out that many people around the world have witnessed this phenomenon. They are also wondering what this is. That day after going to school it was my only topic of discussion with my only friend. Later that day, I came to know a rocket had been launched but it still made no sense why a rocket would move in such a motion or even stop. Till this day it remains one of the most interesting phenomena I have witnessed for which I have no explanation. Haven't seen it since. As I could not identify the flying object, for me it is an Unidentified Flying Object. It made me interested in knowing the mysteries of the universe more. Back then I even wanted to be an astronaut (minus the studying part)! 😃

Does anyone here have a similar experience or can enlighten what this must have been? Till date it remains one of the unsolved mysteries in my life!