Using my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, I managed to capture this picture, including the dun spots which I didn't anticipate i would capture.

This is probably a really stupid question, but it’s been on my mind for a while now.

So I’ve been really interested in Mars’s moons - mainly Phobos. Phobos is slowly moving closer to Mars and is expected to crash/disintegrate in about 40~ million years, while Deimos is being accelerated like our moon and may eventually escape orbit.

If we were to use a strong enough material like kevlar or something even better, could we hypothetically tie the moons together so that their respective movement towards or away from Mars cancel out? (See my little diagram above)

I guess this isn’t really a question, but I was just thinking, by no means am I an astronomy nerd, I know absolutely nothing about space. But I was just thinking about how cool black holes are, they, along with a lot of things in space, go against everything I’ve ever learned about how physics work, and I’m just in awe about all of space, I can’t even, it’s an inexplicable feeling, just knowing how. time, light bends and distorts in the presence of a black hole just is awesome, I know this isn’t. A coherent thought but I just needed to say it

Do you save them on local hard drives, external drives, a NAS, or a cloud storage service? Which storage method or cloud service do you use, and what would you recommend for keeping large RAW files safe?

From what I understand of The Big Bang, we know the rough age of the universe and how it was explained to me is that when the big bang happened everything exploded outwards. My question is how are we still seeing that light if everything exploded outwards from the big bang however nothing moves faster than light? How would we be in position to see the traveling light if we weren't here first?

Curious to know if anyone else saw this or maybe knows the cause-

Approx 2:05am MST, just to the left of the star that is the tail end of Cassiopeia, I saw a bright white flash of light. It happened just once and it was MUCH larger than any of the surrounding stars. Large enough that I thought for a split second it was an airplane light. It was literally as if someone turned a light on and off. There are no visible stars in that area to the naked eye but my Sky Map app does show 2 very tiny stars in that area.

Just curious if anyone else saw it and if it could have been a starburst?? It was just so bright and then... Gone

Let me preface this: Don’t worry, I’m not one of those people that wants to re-litigate Pluto’s planet status. As far as I’m concerned, the definition of “planet” vs. “dwarf planet” is fine.

With that out of the way…

I was in middle school when Pluto got demoted. Since all our textbooks referenced the “nine planets” and no new standards were written yet, our science teachers decided we should learn about the “eight planets” and “three dwarf planets”. We also learned that there were probably hundreds of dwarf planets that hadn’t been discovered, and that a dozen-ish known objects were probably dwarf planets, scientists just hadn’t confirmed it. A few years later, that number had gone up to five dwarf planets, so it seemed like the talk of a whole bunch being out there was correct.

That was essentially it for me, as far as formal education went. I remember staying up late for when the first pictures of Pluto came out when I was in college. And I know there’re some murmurings about a ninth planet that may or may not exist. But that’s about it.

Fast forward to last year. My younger cousins and I went to the Air and Space Museum in D.C., where, alongside the various space capsules and satellite models, there was a plaque about the “five dwarf planets”. I thought that might be outdated, but the museum was just renovated, so I googled to check.

Sure enough, it seems there are still only five dwarf planets, with another four that are probably dwarf planets, but they’re too small/far away for us to be sure. That’s a far cry from the dozens or hundreds I was expecting when I was a kid.

So, my question is this: what happened? Were the “dozens or hundreds” estimates wrong, and there’re actually only a little under a dozen? Are we still in that “okay, they’re probably out there, we just can’t see them” phase? Some other third thing? And what happened to the soon-to-be-confirmed dwarf planets that made them not get confirmed?

1) Why does Venus rotate retrograde? I have heard both a massive impact that we can't see evidence of because it weirdly might just drop plate sized volumes of itself back into its lithosphere. Or something to do with its atmosphere being so thick. Or both?

2) Uranus rotates on its side. Again possibly a massive impact?

3) the Barycenter of Charon and Pluto being outside both bodies, so theoretically anything that got into it with the right velocity would just stay there?

Anyone with more schooling that knows the why, please chime in.

Hi!! I'm an author. I am writing a science fiction novel and I just have a couple logical questions. I'm trying to write it as scientifically accurate as possible but I can only research so much before I get to information that I no longer understand so my friend told me to go to Reddit lol.
So my idea is that there is a space station orbiting either Mercury, Mars, or Venus (haven't decided which yet but if there is one that makes more sense then please help me out with that too). I want there to be some sort of celestial event and I was thinking an alignment of the planets would be cool (either just some of the outer ones or all 8). If you were in a space station orbiting one of those planets (I'm leaning towards Venus if that makes a difference but that's still subject to change), would you be able to see the outer planets align from the station if it was a partial alignment? What if all 8 planets are aligned could you still see part of it? How would you see it? It would be with the naked eye right?
Sorry if this is worded poorly I'm not sure how to explain it better. Also if the entire planet alignment idea is a bust and doesn't make sense realistically, what other big, preferably rare events could I do instead?
Also if this is the wrong place to ask these questions than can someone direct me to the right place?
Thanks a lot!

does anyone know what this could be i saw this during sunset and it was just still the whole time idk i dont think its anything to do with the sun though

Hi!
There will be a solar eclipse in western Europe in august 12th, and I just found out that I already own a telescope.

I'd like to make a DIY solar filter, by making a cover for the opening, with a small hole in it. I'd cover the hole with the filter from solar glasses. And cover the edges so no light came come from there. It would be 3D printed.

However I feel like it is a bad idea. As I don't know how much light the solar glasses let go thru.

Solar filters for telescopes let about 1/100,000th of the light come thru.

Is it a feasible idea? Or too dangerous?

^{I can convince my ex GF to try it so I don't burn my own eyes}

Fotografía realizada con el Seestar S 30

What criteria does an exoplanet need to fulfill to be called as "potentially habitable", as per current academic consensus ?

Hello there,

My name is Pavel. We are planning to create an art project consisting of three short films about the concept of Einstein's telescope in 2027. I am not a scientist, but I found out about this idea yesterday and thought it was absolutely fascinating.

I need help checking that the scripts for the future films are correct from a scientific perspective. So, if you are a scientist with a little free time who is passionate about participating in an artistic and educational project about the Einstein Telescope, please reach out to me via DM.

Okay so but like is there any hypothetical arrangement of stars, planets, moons, submoons, asteroid belts, etcetera and if necessary magic and/or technology that would allow​​ for a place that always had either a full moon on a tidally-locked half of the planet or an always-full moon orbiting a planet? Maybe an L2 situation with magick/tech?

I'm not really an author and I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Thinking of a story about a place where half the planet is always a full moon and everyone is werewolves and they go to the other side to chill out as humans, or a planet where it's just a full moon all the time, ​and they turn into werewolves every night or travel to avoid the moon or something.