Space & Astronomy
Exploring "Why" questions about Space & Astronomy
480 articles
Why can you sometimes see the Moon in the middle of the day?
The moon goes around the Earth at a steady rate but *not* once per day, it takes about 28 days for the moon to go around the Earth. This causes the phases of the moon. The moon is visible for about 12
why can NASA get super high resolution images of galaxies hundreds and thousands of light years away, but struggle and cannot get even a decent image of Pluto?
The same reason you can get a brilliant image of the mountain 100 miles away in the day with your camera phone but a professional photographer wouldn't be able to make out the detail of a flea across
Why do pictures of far away galaxies appear so crisp and beautiful but recent images of an asteroid near earth is grainy and of poor quality
The difference is like: * Asteroid...looking at a golf ball, at night, located across the street from you. * Galaxy...looking at a spot light, at night, pointed at you from a block away.
Why do some people think Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing?
Conspiracy theorists always like to latch onto things that they didn't see with their own eyes and figure out how it is faked. 2001: A Space Odyssey was made a year before a man walked on the moon and
Why does the sun appear to move much faster when it sets than during the rest of the day?
Your brain doesn't understand that the sky is round. It perceives it more as a giant room, with the walls very far away, and a level ceiling connecting them. The sun and moon are about the same size a
Why can’t we just throw satellites or sensors into a black hole to see what happens?
The nearest black hole is 1600 light years away, for a start. Even if we have a black hole at easy reach (and it somehow wasn't destroying us all) the definition of a black hole is that it is so massi
why is it ok to watch a sunset, but its not ok to stare at the sun any other time?
When the sun is low on the horizon, it has to shine through more atmosphere to reach you since it's going across instead of straight down. This dims it by absorbing and scattering the light.
Why is radioactive waste such a massive problem? Why can’t we just shoot it into space?
Because there is a lot of waste, space travel is expensive and if a rocket fails you get showered in radioactive waste. Maybe once we have a space elevator installed that would be a viable option.
Why do some sporting events start at odd times like 7:05 or like the Final Four games at 5:09, 7:54, etc rather than simply 7:00 or 5:00?
It works better for TV. Practically all TV is run on schedules of starting at the top of the hour or the bottom. For a sporting event, they want to have an introduction before the event starts.
Why is David Hasselhoff such a star in Germany?
Rewboss, a Brit living in Germany quite perfectly explained it in [this video](_URL_0_). Short version: He is only famous for one song "Looking for freedom" because that song coincided with the Fall o