Follow up question: Do we know of any stars existing outside of galaxies? And if there were, could we detect them?

What is the likelihood that humanity is the first intelligent civilization in the universe?

I’ve been watching a lot of Kurzgesagt and Astrum videos over the years and they touch on a few different theories for the likelihood of intelligent life in the universe and where humanity slots into the timeline. But one thing I haven’t seen anybody discuss is the likelihood that we are the first ones to do it.

So, assuming that the universe will end via entropy in 10^100 years, wouldn’t that mean we came about at comparatively the beginning of the universe?

That could partially explain why we haven’t actually detected any obvious signs of life out there.

Just a thought, but I’m very curious what other people think!

As a young child in school I learned that the asteroid belt formed due to Jupiter's gravitation disrupting the formation of a planet in this region. My question is if this is correct, how did large moons such as Ganymede and Callisto form? Wouldn't being much closer to Jupiter impede the formation of any moon, especially such large moons?

i live in Novy Urengoy, Russia, and i saw this outside (sept 1st, 01:46). 30 min later it just went further further, to the north. i thought that might be an aurora, but i never saw it being red, so bright (especially in the middle of the city), and also it usually occurs in winter.

i’m not even sure if that’s something astronomical, but i didn’t hear like any helicopter or plane sounds. we also have wildfires right now, but it’s like pretty much far away, so ig it’s not connected.

i know nothing about astronomy, but i would like to know what is it.

Guys, can a star be created after a supernova from the remnant?

Hello! I'm currently trying to do some research regarding the formation of the solar system and our neighboring planets. I understand that this is mostly theoretical. I would love resources that include many different theories rather than just the most popular ones of today. I'm struggling to know where to start.

I would love to go straight to the source and read scientific journal articles but I'm struggling with finding articles that are relevant to my interest.

Or I'd love recommendations for books which cover this topic.

Any help is appreciated, thanks :)

Any help appreciated

I don't know if this is the right subreddit to be in (this is my first time begin on reddit so hi) but I have to start from somewhere so here we are. I go by SF and I'm a someone who is trying to find information online on how I can become an astronomer. I'm currently a physics major from a small college called Northern Illinois University and I'm in my 2nd week of college. At the moment, I've been studying the constellations from flashcards so that I can pinpoint what constellations are in the sky during the current night. I'm not the best at describing things but what I can say is that I want to become an astronomer but I don't know the right steps on becoming one. The best way I could describe is imagine you want to drive somewhere. Let's say you live in Pittsburgh but you want to drive to Seattle. Of course you would pull up your GPS and follow what it says in order to get from Pittsburg to Seattle but let's say that the GPS doesn't simply give you the directions to go and wants you to figure it out yourself; that's how I would describe my situation. I want to become an astronomer but I don't know what I have to do in order to become one. I know that the college I'm currently at isn't the right place to be studying astronomy so I plan on transferring to a more astronomy based school in my 2nd year of college. I also plan on getting an internship about astronomy so I can get a feel what it's like to work in the space department. But all these things feel so little to me of what it takes to be an astronomer and it causes me to have so much questions. I have no clue on what to do because not only I have low knowledge on astronomy in general but also I don't know what to do in order to become one. Like should I transfer to another college that's more astronomy based in my 2nd semester until I transfer to a much bigger school? What can I do right now that leads me to the right direction to become an astronomer when I'm currently at a school whos education system doesn't have a great astronomy education system? How can I familiarize myself into the space community and how can I be apart of it so that I can become an astronomer? How do I get astronomy based internships? How can I improve my knowledge on astronomy as I'm in a college that doesn't have much astronomy education? I'm clueless right now but I hope I have some of these questions answered instead of having no questions answered and looking like a lost duck all the time. As a recall, my name is SF and my goal is to become an astronomer. I go on different social media sites trying to find answers on how I can become an astronomer and what it takes to become one. I hope I have others that can support me and see my progress on this journey. So if you have information please reply to this post as I want to become an astronomer. (Yes I also know that the astronomy job market is competitive but that isn't going to stop me from becoming one because it's my childhood dream and I'm not giving up because of that.)

Took this shot during the Perseid meteor shower.
I can spot Andromeda and the Pleiades, but Im sure I’m missing a bunch of stuff.
Would love to hear what you guys find.

Guys, Y'all are interested in Astronomy and Astrophysics. So, for this I have created a small Club type thing called CARO(Celestial and Astronomical Research Order).

So, To join this y'all atleast need to be interested between astronomy or astrophysics that is obvious. And you need to have an online connection. You don't need any fee to join this order. Anyone one can join.

And, we will do astronomical research and try to find out things that organisations like NASA, ESA, Space X, etc. haven't found yet.

To join the server, click the link below:

https://discord.gg/vqQQyGyGK

After you have joined, you will be met with me to interview you and ask your things. Based on your eligibility, I will give you some roles. The roles are give below.

Researcher

Lead researcher (Leads a research)

Data analyst (Analyses data and arranges data)

Telescope member (Guy with a telescope)

(This could be deleted at any time so...)

When I was a kid, I imagined the Big Bang as a big explosion, but as I've read over the years, I learned that the Big Bang wasn't an explosion in one place like media likes to show.

So my question is, what would it actually look like? Because what people have saying is that matter used to be everywhere before it, so, was it multiple explosions throughout space or did everything just start to explode? Before the Big Bang, was it just a cloud of matter or were there planets? I'm asking because of the sentence that I've been hearing that "matter was already there before the Big Bang". Everything about this event is just confusing to me to imagine.

We saw another one like this, only got footage of this one. A light traveling across the sky and then “blowing up”? The explosion or whatever dissipated across the whole sky and faded out. Any idea what it was?

When you first started astrophotography, did you run into these annoying problems?
Spending ages trying to adjust your camera and telescope with no clear guide.
Or driving out for a stargazing trip, only to find bad seeing, cloud cover you didn’t predict — completely missing your shot window.

I’m a young stargazing fan doing a school project. I’m curious how many nights you miss shooting stars because of unreliable weather forecasts. Thanks for your help! 😆

I'm a software engineer and have been doing astrophotography for a few years now with a beginner-simple setup (Celestron 6SE, Alt/Az Mount, Rebel T7 Camera), and always found it difficult to know what my equipment could handle/how long of integration time was necessary for specific DSOs. So I built this to try and reduce my mistakes and time wasted as I live in an area where clear nights are few and far between. It basically just takes your setup, and then gives you a list of top targets but the really cool thing I like in it is that you can see your detailed "Exposure Plan" and all that.

I would really love to get feedback from people with different setups (I have a bunch of different telescopes, mounts and cameras pre-configured within the app). As I only have my own setup, testing against others has pretty much been non-existent, and basically me just comparing to what people have posted in r/astrophotography . I think it works well for my own setup, and have been able to get some pretty good estimates to what my end results looked like.

Thanks again for taking the time, and please comment/DM me if you wanna try it out and give some feedback! Ill send you a full lifetime link for the app for your contributions!

I’m a young stargazing fan doing a school project. I’m curious how many nights you miss shooting stars because of unreliable weather forecasts. Thanks for your help!😆

I have been having a shower thought of sorts that I want answers to. If I have a semisphere that is uniformly dense, how do I calculate the gravitational acceleration at the flat side? Let's say I have a semisphere that is half the mass of the earth with earths radius and I would stand on the flat side in the middle how many gs would I experience at the surface? And 1m, 1km and 1000 km above the surface, how much less would the acceleration be? I imagine the differences would be very small but the further away I would get the more the calculation would be like a point mass, right? How would this affect the calculation for tidal acceleration?

I find very little about this online and my physics knowledge about this as well as my mathematical skills are not sharpened enough so that I could answer this on my own.

I have just been intrigued by this thought and I can't find answers! Please help! 🫠

TON 618 is estimated to have a mass of around 66 billion Suns.

That number alone is difficult to comprehend—but the bigger mystery is how something like this could exist at all.

A few questions I explored while researching TON 618:

How do astronomers weigh an invisible black hole?

How can spectral lines reveal the speed of gas around it?

How do black holes grow from relatively small seeds into ultramassive black holes?

Could some of the earliest black holes have been born massive rather than growing from stellar remnants?

And is TON 618 actually the largest black hole in the Universe, or could something even bigger be hiding out there?

I put together a video exploring these questions and the science behind TON 618.

🎥 Watch here: https://youtu.be/IdhJ2BTZSCg?si=21yUnyfDxG0Rg3aZ

title.

but yeah, just a random idea that popped up into my head. from what i know, we haven’t actually seen planet 9 cuz it absorbs barely any light making it hard to see.

however, if i remember correctly, nancy is equipped with an infrared camera or something that’s supposed to help it see exoplanets better

so could its equipment find out if planet 9 exists? or is it going another way ? i’d love to know

Satellite? Plane?