r/spacequestions

Wife and i graduated high school in 72.

Neither of us remember what mnemonic was taught for the planetary names.

Every one i find on the web is not it.

So...

Any old timers like us remember what they were taught?

(I seem to remember "Mary" was used for either Mars or Mercury. And, no, alzheimers has not set in quite yet.)

I would honestly, as long as I can get back to earth. But I think exploring a new planet and finding stuff perseverance, and curiosity (the 2 mars rovers currently active) has not found yet. Like signs of life, and new mysteries.

Hi r/astrophysics, I've been thinking about this for a few days. There's a few questions here, so bear with me.

Firstly, do all planetary bodies which become spherical begin spherically, or are the early stages of many bodies irregularly shaped, until more mass is accumulated?

Next, why aren't some of even the largest asteroids then, for example, not spherical? Where's that "tipping point" in size, volume, and mass that causes a spacial object to become (or begin) a spherical shape?

Lastly, is it possible for an irregularly shaped, non-round body to become spherical later due to mass accumulation?

Thank you for taking the time to read. Really looking forward to the answers.

I want to know if we will or not, since technology for space is really limited for travelling, but I wonder if we can send humans on telescopes somehow, or just rockets to make us go so far like we have never before.

Sorry if this is a silly question! I'll do my best to explain.

I heard that on Earth, since stars are so far away, they could already be dead but we wouldn't know due to distance and the way light travels. This made me wonder how close someone would have to be to the stars to actually see the light fade in real time? Like, if I was on Mars for example, would I be able to see the stars close to Mars disappear?

In the same vein, when you're on a spacecraft or space station, are you actually traveling amongst stars? If one of them exploded or burnt out, would you be able to see that? This might all be very obvious but basic space stuff always seems to elude me.

Edit:

Thank you all for the responses! I do think saying “real time” without elaborating was a bit confusing! I did pretty much mean at most a few minutes delay, as in this hypothetical I wouldn’t die or be hurt. I think I mostly understand now, though. Everyone’s replies have been very helpful! It seems like the distance impacts the delay in a lot more simple of a way than I (for some reason??) assumed.

I made it a lot more complicated in my mind. Thanks again to everyone who replied!!

This has been a question I wanted to ask for a while, and this is genuine. I really want to know what is so hard about finding a planet in our solar system but objects ridiculously far away from earth.

Anytime I’m reading/watching a topic on space and they mention a name of an exoplanet, star, nebulae, or maybe even a black hole, they have super strange names. Like what is exoplanet KIC 8462852?

To be honest, I understand that we can do it from sound waves, seeing that warping of space around it, but how do we know just where to look?

Everyone talks about how these data centers are heat islands, so why would you spend the effort to put them in the vacuum of space where heat loss is slowed down significantly?

I was thinking about this in regards to a lot of sci-fi spaceships that we see. Even ones that are canonically too big to ever actually land on a planet or enter atmosphere are designed somewhat aerodynamic. The only exception I can think of is the Borg cube from Trek, which I think was intentional to make them radically stand out design wise.

Is there an advantage to this design, or is it human nature at this point?

Does it sound logical?

I want to hear the scariest fact you know. Not, “we’ve only discovered like 0.1% of space” like I mean the SCARIEST.