How About That? - Page 4

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The orbit of Jupiter’s moons are all messed up and seemingly overlap. Do they interact much? Greg, U.S. Jupiter has 67 confirmed moons. Of these, 8 are regular satellites with nice prograde motion (they move in agreement with Jupiter rotation).

Does the specific location of a solar system within a galaxy affect the solar system’s structure? Like does distance from the centre affect how big the star is, or what kind of planets form? Stuart, London Indirectly yes. You have more gas on the outskirts than in the central regions.

Short Answer - the temperature of a black hole is inversely proportional to its mass. For a black hole with the same mass as our Sun the temperature is 60 billionths of a degree kelvin.

Iapetus is the third largest satellite of Saturn, and it is the largest object in the solar system not in hydrostatic equilibrium. Iapetus is a moon of Saturn known for its colour dichotomy. It has a dark side and white side, and it is often called the Yin Yang moon.

Are Mimas and Miranda the smallest known objects in hydrostatic equilibrium? Dan – London This question relates to the shape of astrophysical objects and as we discussed in the past, it’s an important characteristic of stars, and it’s in the definition of “planet”.

As we discussed in the previous vlog our understanding of stars is still incomplete, but there are areas which we are very confident on what we know.

In general we tend to know three things about stars: their brightness, their spectrum, and if they are close enough or of known luminosity, we can also know their distance.

The cosmos has plenty of terrifying Lovecraftian features, but one of my favourites is the Space Roar.

There is a loud radio signal, described as a constant hiss, that seems to pervade the cosmos. It is louder than the radio signature of radio galaxies, and it is without explanation.

I have a space question. I know about the Roche limit but is there an upper limit to how big a ring can get compared to its planet?

Asked by Dan

Of course there are limits, the Universe is all about limits! But they’re not as strict as one would think.

We have found an object in 2012, J1407b, with a ring system 200 million kilometres in diameter. If the rings were centred on Earth they would cover the inner solar system all the way to the orbit of Mercury on the opposite side of the Sun.

I was asked by Larry, one of my students, about what would be the best place in the solar system to destroy the One Ring. Since the 25th of March is the anniversary of its destruction and the fall of Sauron I thought I’d dedicate this vlog to answering the question as seriously and as accurately as possible.

My friend Russell asked me under which condition an object would be able to stand still around the Sun. This is a very interesting question; it probes some fundamental facts about the solar system and its applications are keeping many engineers around the world busy. Planets go around the Sun due to Sun’s gravitational field.

What would a planet orbiting a pulsar look like from the ground? Would it look like a giant disco planet with a constant strobe light? Pulsar form from supernova explosions, and they are neutron stars that spin on their axis thousand time per second.

I know that likelihood of stars colliding is very low, but have there been papers describing the theoretical process of star collision? James, London I think we can divide star-collision into three classes; Stellar Mergers, Binary Collisions and Stellar Collision.