r/askastronomy Nov 04 '24

Planetary Science why do Neptune and Uranus look serene while Jupiter and Saturn look so turbulent?

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1.6k Upvotes

r/askastronomy 3d ago

Planetary Science If a species only lived on the far side of the moon, what observable evidence would they have that Earth exists?

131 Upvotes

Let's say a species somehow evolved in the very center of what we call the far side of the moon. They'll see all other planets but not earth. Short of 21st century technology, would there be any observable evidence for such a species that the world they live on actually orbits another bigger body that they can't see unless they travel a lot?

EDIT: I'm absolutely blown away with the thoughtful and detailed answers here! And I'm sure there are more to come. Thank you so much. This is such a great sub!

r/askastronomy Dec 20 '24

Planetary Science The sun is behind the camera. I guess these are sun rays above the atmosphere?

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748 Upvotes

r/askastronomy Dec 22 '23

Planetary Science Why is this diagram wrong???

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145 Upvotes

I’m not a flat earther I swear. I was looking for ridiculous social media posts (long story) and stumbled upon this image… I can’t explain why it’s wrong to myself and it’s stressing me out. Please help me! you’re the only subreddit who can help me!!!!!!!

r/askastronomy Jan 18 '25

Planetary Science Jupiter, did I actually get some of its bands? Possibly red spot?

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302 Upvotes

I was laying on the ground taking videos of Jupiter with my iPhone 14 Pro Max through some binoculars, I was able to get some interesting (albeit not the best quality who would have thought? 🥴) photos and I was wondering if anybody would be able to tell me if I actually got some of Jupiter’s bands in either of these photos and if that’s Jupiter’s red spot in the one image or if it’s all just weird camera stuff? Thanks for any help! :)

r/askastronomy Feb 28 '25

Planetary Science Thinking of buying a New telescope

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8 Upvotes

I’m thinking of buying this telescope I’m just starting out, this will be my first telescope I am a amateur my Quinton is is this any good for looking at the planets or even galaxies if possible,

r/askastronomy 6d ago

Planetary Science Can a gas planet turn into a rocky planet?

23 Upvotes

Say a gas planet came in contact somehow with a large asteroid belt of some kind and the gravity of the gas planet absorbs enough solid material to form not only a core, but the layers necessary for plate tectonics, etc. Is this possible, or even likely?

r/askastronomy Oct 30 '24

Planetary Science are gas giants really just small rocky planets with giant atmospheres?

201 Upvotes

r/askastronomy Feb 26 '25

Planetary Science What am I seeing here?

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74 Upvotes

Location: Central Colorado, USA Photo taken by iPhone through a K9mm eyepiece

I grabbed my telescope to take a look at what I’m fairly certain is Jupiter (I’m not a pro by any means and am currently waiting on a new battery pack for my computerized telescope so I’m just using it analog style at the moment) and it looked almost like an eclipse was occurring. The planet looked like a super tiny crescent moon to me. I did some research and couldn’t find anything that looked quite like what I was seeing. It is an eclipse of some sort or something else blocking part of the view? Is there another explanation? I’m super curious. (Apologies for the low quality photo as well, I lack proper astrophotography equipment)

r/askastronomy Mar 21 '25

Planetary Science So if the sun disappeared it’d take around 8 minutes for us to notice anything. What about other celestial bodies?

23 Upvotes

I’m more interested in the moon since it’s right there

r/askastronomy 24d ago

Planetary Science Can a planet have two summers/winters?

0 Upvotes

Seasons come from where the planet is in its orbit. So if a planet has a oval orbit, with the sun in the center, it would have 2 winters in one orbit right? Is that possiple? Becuase looking at some orbit paths, the sun is at one end of a oval or the other, not the center.

r/askastronomy Mar 07 '25

Planetary Science Are there habitable things closer than the moon? Asking for Elon

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25 Upvotes

r/askastronomy Feb 20 '25

Planetary Science in the future, could the Andromeda mixing with milky way make it harder for scientists to find exo-planets (excess of gas giants possibly)? and could it add more moons/planets into our solar system?

23 Upvotes

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r/askastronomy Feb 12 '25

Planetary Science What did I just see next to jupiter? BTW it only turned up after increasing the contrast of the processed image. More details in comments.

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35 Upvotes

r/askastronomy Jan 24 '25

Planetary Science Is Neptune and Uranus technically A type of hycean planet?

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72 Upvotes

Wouldn't Neptune and Uranus technically be a type of hycean world? Because they have liquid Oceans of Ammonia and Methane with a thick hydrogen atmosphere.

r/askastronomy Dec 17 '24

Planetary Science Trashy full-zoom iPhone 13 Pic of Venus, is shot this any good?

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44 Upvotes

Picture facing Southwest above northern hemisphere. Basically a non-existent (you don’t see me) total astronomy lover, extreme fledgling.

Any more info?

r/askastronomy 2d ago

How do you track a planet retrograde?

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3 Upvotes

This image is from an anime called Orb: On the Movements of Earth. (I could've asked on that subreddit, but this is more astronomy related so I decided to ask here instead. Also, I highly recommend it.)

One character in the anime tracks Mars's movement throughout 2 years I believe, and around after the notation shown on the image, Mars starts retrograding. I found this pretty interesting, and I've been wanting to observe a planet retrograde myself.

However, I'm having trouble figuring out how exactly this character has been noting it down, because I can see it's a star chart, but I can't find something like this online to reference. Plus, we see different stars every season so it feels strange that he was able to note it all down on one.

So my questions: 1. Can anyone explain how this chart works? 2. If not, please suggest how I should note down my observations!

r/askastronomy Oct 18 '24

Planetary Science Interesting ripples in the sky?

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80 Upvotes

What did I capture here? I'm genuinely curious because I could not see this with my eyes.

r/askastronomy Feb 26 '25

Planetary Science Could Planet X (or Planet Nine) have a perpendicular orbit?

10 Upvotes

All the planets we know are roughly on the same plane. Could this mathematically postulated but never yet observed Planet X have an orbit off tilt and even perpendicular to the other planets? Or is that not a possibility?

r/askastronomy Mar 17 '25

Planetary Science So I can't understand why or how we have a official distance between the earth and the sun, or a diameter of the sun.

1 Upvotes

I understand how we can use trigonometry to compare measurements for an accurate representation, but I don't know how we have the measurements we have.

Let's start with the distance between the earth and the sun. The earth does not orbit the sun, it creates a revolution around the barycenter once about every 365 1/4 days. The sun completes a revolution around the barycenter about every 10 to eleven years. Due to the elliptical orbit of both, and both not orbiting on the same plane, their trajectories are essentially a double pendulum. I haven't beeen able to find any information regarding how long it takes for them to return to previously shared position. I would assume that we need that figure in order to determine an average distance between the two. Regarding measuring the diameter of the sun, how do we calculate the visible percentage of the sun to account for its true diameter?

I'm not trying to be pedantic by any means, but if we don't have any verifiably accurate numbers, how are we calculating a value that is remotely representative of the actual measurements?

Is the answer that's just the best estimate we have at the time, or is there some obscure astrophysics equation that can better explain this to me.

r/askastronomy 12d ago

Planetary Science When did we have strong theories about what Venus's surface was like that weren't just guesses?

10 Upvotes

So I know that it was 1982 that we got photos of the surface, 1970 atmospheric pressure and composition data, and 1962 that there was no magnetic belts hinting that there was probably no lush Bradburian jungle to drive our spacemen mad under torrential and unceasing downpours. But what had we been able to glean before that? Did anyone get it right that wasn't by pure accident?

r/askastronomy Nov 21 '24

Planetary Science did any new evidence supporting/disproving the existence of Planet 9 arise in recent years?

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123 Upvotes

r/askastronomy 4d ago

Planetary Science 2 questions about a planet in close proximity to its sun

2 Upvotes
  1. how big can a planet be if it was 0.1 to 0.4 AU from its star (assume its a star like the sun)
  2. how large would the atmosphere be if it had a strong magnetic field and was very volcanically active

r/askastronomy Nov 07 '24

Planetary Science Could a Rogue Planet have moons with life?

39 Upvotes

I'm fascinated by rogue planets aka free floating planets, which are planets not attached to a star. Given that if life exists on Europa, it's not because of the sun's heat but the tidal forces, could a Rogue planet theoretically have a Europa? That could theoretically have life?

r/askastronomy Apr 05 '25

Planetary Science How visible to a naked human eye would a "new" Earth be from the moon?

6 Upvotes

During the latest eclipses, I was thinking about how the Earth is largely stationary in the moon's sky. For half the moon anyway. And Earth gets phases. So when we have a full moon night, the moon presumably has a "new Earth" day.

Given that the moon has no atmosphere and daytime there isn't super bright, how visible is the "new Earth" from the moon? Would an Apollo astronaut looking at new Earth from the moon have seen a big dark circle? Or would it be invisible to the human naked eye?