@Undo - regarding that sombrero one. I think density is relative - it blocks out a fair bit of light from the stars behind it, and reflects a lot, but if you flew a spaceship through it I wonder how bad it would be. My guess is that speed would be dramatically reduced
I've seen in encouraged amount many sites to encourage people to ask for a period of time about a specific topic, in a way to encourage more site activity. Space Exploration has recently started doing this. We asked in our chatroom if there was a better way to feature a particular topic for a wee...
@Undo Right, whatever new game they're busy crushing skulls of virtual opponents in, it can wait. Remind me not to argue, if there's gonna be lazy arses commenting tho, please.
there's alway a lot of opposition to do much anything ... effort isn't one of the tags on mSO, as you have probably noticed yourself LOL
@Undo Oh sure, better than the intimidating red... those look like some sort of warning. Maybe not really so green and using same one as for accepted, or not green at all, but yeah pretty much anything else than red and dark gray that are now used
@Undo yup... still added to the answer these two, because I wanted to also mention there's an unused class that could easily be reused for this purpose in the CSS
hahaha yes... it's simple actually... there's a volume of a sphere, and particle density, and... what the bleep? aha, sure, I get it... yup... really simple.
@RoryAlsop oh just use wiki and quote somewhere between 10^-4 to 10^6 particles per cubic centimeter... it's still like 16 orders of magnitude less than water
We've decided to keep Astronomy Stack Exchange in PRIVATE beta for one more week. The Community Manager team reviewed the site so far and, while we love the enthusiasm here, we are deeply concerned that many of the questions and answers are poor or literal copies of material available elsewhere ...
Well, for what it's worth, I don't think it's that bad that we've more or less answered those 200 easy questions either, they'd always want to come back even if we tried to remove them. The problem is, how I see it, that not many questions are challenging enough. Anyone in the field will be able to pull most of the answers out of their heads while sleeping, even telling you where to check for numbers and such...
I like those questions that can be answered with descriptions, analogies, e.t.c., I really do... but I'm not sure those were meant to be here in such numbers during private beta
@Undo 80% of SEx.SE is already here, and it actually shows on SEx.SE already... and there was possibly the best day for Space Exploration in the last 10 years just yesterday... Cygnus capture, Falcon 9 launch, Proton M launch... loads of interesting turns of events e.t.c. ... and there were maybe 5 of us there, 3 of which not even active on the site that much
Let say we measure the superficial brightness of an object in the $B$ band, $I_{B}$ measured in $\displaystyle\frac{L_{*}}{\mbox{pc}^2}$ where $L_{*}$ is solar luminosity and $\mbox{pc}$ is parsec. I have to show that, in magnitudes per arc sec
$$\mu_{B}=27.05-2.5\log(I_{B}) $$
My guess is that...
Well let's push more for it then... we can't have questions requiring MathJax, or answers for them unless we get it. I don't see many wanting to capture formulas in images... that's too elaborate
We decided to keep the Philosophy Stack Exchange in PRIVATE beta a bit longer until we can get a clear statement (and enforcement) of one major issue:
What is this site about?
In particular, there seems to be two types of questions asked on this site:
Questions about the branches of philosoph...
I also think there's a publicity problem. I would like to share the site with other astronomers/astrophysicists I know, but I also know that it's hard to get a critical mass of people willing to put much time into something like this.
Frankly I don't personally want to be answering more than ~1 technical question a week myself, and I know that many others like me are in the same boat.
@JonEricson I think the issue is that the website is not attractive to the sorts of people who would potentially want to use it. What you're basically asking people to do is chop down trees with golf clubs... :-)
@Guillochon In the private beta we aren't looking to pull people in. Rather we are trying to get things sorted out so that we have all the kinks worked out before the public comes. I'll raise the issue with the team to see if this is a possibility, however.
I'm going to make an effort right now to ask ~5 hard questions. I only asked one so far, and it's on the easy side of things. I doubt I'll get answers in the near-term, but hopefully it will be a model.
@Guillochon You know, I've been on brand new sites where I asked questions that I thought would be too hard---and got some amazing and surprising answers. You gotta trust yourselves a bit.
The Sombrero Galaxy contains a rather peculiar ring of dust orbiting it (seen as the dark ring on the outer edge). What is the prevalent element in this dust? Carbon?
@Undo The question is framed as if the Sombrero galaxy has a peculiar elemental composition (which is sort of weird), really the answer to your question is just the answer to the question of "what is dust made of?"
@Undo It's just the question itself seems to presuppose that just because the Sombrero galaxy is edge-on and has a prominent dust lane that the dust must be made of weird stuff. It shows that what you really want to know is what is dust made out of (and thus explains the answer you received).
Another issue is that many of the questions I would ask are not answerable without doing years of additional research. The best someone can do is write a short summary of the litany of ideas to explain a particular concept.
Isaac Moses, the patriarch of Mi Yodeya, wrote something that caught my eye the other day:
[...] the general Stack Exchange directive, expressed in the uneditable part of that section of the About page, to "Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what...
@Guillochon Hmm actually, such questions can be sometimes difficult to argue, that the answer is in some other question. I kinda like such questions, even if they present some miscomprehension in the question, because they provide for an opportunity to discuss something in general, as well as go later back to specifics. So it's a bit of both, and exactly such questions also tend to be rep trains and gain many new members for the site. So... a bit of both is IMO really, really good.
@Guillochon I know, that's what I've been trying to fight here from the very start... not in this chat, or people that tend to come here, but there were some instances of members going on a copy/paste frenzy.
@UV-D this is wrong.... look, you're clearly interested in the field, you probably read something and have questions you're not sure about and can't find answers... that would be a good source of good questions.
@Guillochon 1) not sure, might be too broad, 2) fine, but possibly for Phy.SE, depends on wording, 3) too easy, if you don't also ask for examples 4) argumentative? define boundaries of the spiral arm 5) Harrington's 10th planet? No... but could be reworded to ask for exoplanetary mass of the Solar system, or something like that 6) Actually good IMO, 7) Ask for evidence, otherwise argumentative, 8) Too broad? Define "Sun" then ask for numbers, there would be many, 9) Define scope,...
10) Maybe, but sounds too broad?, 11) Argumentative, reword it to ask for evidence, which ones we can prove and to what extent that either of the two were their source, 12) You know that is a no... it'll take roughly what? Out of my head ... 100.000 years?
@Guillochon No, I don't think that... it's just that some might be answering about the existence of the 10th planet, so be careful how you word it, that's all
With this bug I contacted and still coughing, I've noticed I laugh like Mumbly... so I'd laugh, then recursively laugh at myself for laughing like I do LOL
@UV-D I think it's fine, but make sure you word it "less educated" also in the body, so it can be searched easier... in essence, describe the meaning of the question also for non-scientists in the crowd, so they can learn something
Alright well, I threw out 12 question possibilities. I think maybe what we should do is have a wiki post with just question titles, and then the community can choose to flesh out the ones it chooses to?
I really don't want to write up 12 questions all by myself unless there's a communal effort
Really, we should have a good 100+ unique questions
@UV-D I like to use both, but each will have their own style of writing. I'd sometimes simply hate to use the same word twice if there are alternatives, but have noticed that on other days I'd repeat myself more often... dunno, your call. It's about personal style, so take my suggestion as just that - a suggestion. ;)
defining something also in common terms can sometimes be really hard and it's kind of an art almost, not to oversimplify it and still capture the gist of it... I'd sometimes fail, other times succeed, more frequently than not tho, I'd just find myself repeating same analogies my professors would use back at school
Let say we measure the superficial brightness of an object in the $B$ band, $I_{B}$ measured in $\displaystyle\frac{L_{*}}{\mbox{pc}^2}$ where $L_{*}$ is solar luminosity and $\mbox{pc}$ is parsec. I have to show that, in magnitudes per arc sec
$$\mu_{B}=27.05-2.5\log(I_{B}) $$
My guess is that...
We decided to keep the Philosophy Stack Exchange in PRIVATE beta a bit longer until we can get a clear statement (and enforcement) of one major issue:
What is this site about?
In particular, there seems to be two types of questions asked on this site:
Questions about the branches of philosoph...
The Sombrero Galaxy contains a rather peculiar ring of dust orbiting it (seen as the dark ring on the outer edge). What is the prevalent element in this dust? Carbon?
Isaac Moses, the patriarch of Mi Yodeya, wrote something that caught my eye the other day:
[...] the general Stack Exchange directive, expressed in the uneditable part of that section of the About page, to "Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what...
