Space & Astronomy
Exploring "Why" questions about Space & Astronomy
480 articles
Why do very large meteors appear green when streaking across the sky and is it the same reason why the Aurora Borealis is green?
I think it has to do with the actual makeup up the meteor it self . Certain gases will burn a different color when entering the atmosphere .
Why is the space shuttle’s fuel tank painted orange? Is there a reason or is it only aesthetic?
It's covered with insulating foam that is naturally orange. They originally planned to paint it, but found that paint added tangible weight to the tank, enough to decide to leave it unpainted.
Why have people always craved gold, so intensely, for so long? Starting from ancient civilisations up until the rich of modern day?
Gold is a pretty unique element. It is one of the few metals that is found in a relatively pure form in nature (although not so much anymore--the easy-to-find stuff has pretty well been taken by now).
Why can’t we land on the moon again?
During the Apollo program, we used a type of spacecraft designed to land on the moon and return to the earth safely. After that program concluded, we moved to the shuttle program which had no landing
Why was water on Mars so important but we already knew there are oceans on Enciladus?
Water on Enciladus is like finding cheap gasoline on some random gas station way out of your way. Still a good find, but kinda inconvenient to use. Water on Mars is like finding cheap gasoline in a ne
Why does the universe form multiple galaxies instead of one super galaxy?
Galaxies are gravitationally anchored by extreme masses like supermassive black holes at their cores. A "universal galaxy" would require a single core that is able encompass the whole universe within
Why, regardless of how big it looks, my cellphone camera always shows the Moon as a tiny dot?
Because the camera is right and your perception is wrong. To test this, next time you see the moon, give it a big thumbs up. Seriously.
why does a lunar eclipse appear red while a Cresent moon appears black when the earth blocks light?
The red is caused by the Moon being in the shadow of the Earth's atmosphere. You see the same thing at Sunrise and Sunset when the sky turns red. That red is falling on the Moon.
Why isn’t it light out when it’s night time? With all the trillions of stars blanketing the night sky, where does all that light hitting earth go?
There are large dust clouds within the milky way galaxy which block light from many of the stars. Apart from that, though there are many stars, they are also very far away. It used to be considered a
Why does a computer sometimes have a hard time starting up, and what exactly does a Start Up Repair do to fix it?
There are about a million ways your computer's software can break. A program can overwrite an important file used during the boot process. A important file can spontaneously change due to less-then-pe