Question: If we are accepting planetary science here, would 'does the moon have any atmosphere' be for here or Astro?

@Undo Well both, but IMO better here, because we don't merely have remote observations but actual on the lunar ground ones too. It might be interesting to answer it from the historical perspective too, so parts of answers will cross scopes of both sites tho. And there's a lot of hope for the future findings of LADEE and our ability to answer a few of the ancient old theories behind some exospheric phenomena that we know is happening on the Moon. So, in theory, it could also fit Phy.SE.

When I say ancient ... not really, but still before I was born, so... yeah :))

@Tildal Mind coming over to Astro chat to help me encourage UV-D? Some of his questions were in one of Jon Ericson's meta post on how we should be asking more pointed questions, and he's taking it a little hard.

@Undo ah sure

@Tildal I'm actually afraid we might lose him.

@Undo neah I don't think so... anyway, let's not talk behind one's back, I believe there's a motion to prohibit that somewhere on mSO LOL (it is, but it's a fun/joke proposal, and so is mine BTW :P)

@TildalWave it would absolutely be on topic for Physics (which is actually Physics & Astronomy, even though the site logo doesn't indicate it)

@DavidZ Oh, I know that... and so does @Undo I presume. :) It is one of those questions that could be asked on many SE sites, depending on OP's preference and what type of answers are expected. I have a few answers here on lunar regolith and exosphere and they found their place well enough, although they could as well be posted on Phy.SE, I guess.

@DavidZ You'll keep the astronomy part in your scope once Astronomy.SE goes in public beta?

I mean... not that it'll ever be out of scope, I meant that now it's mentioned in Phy.SE About ... my honest opinion is, that there's technical aspects to astronomy that might not be appreciated so much on Phy.SE, like e.g. I just answered yesterday how to collimate a dobsonian/newtonian with a laser collimator

@DavidZ BTW, would you like an invite to Astro.SE, or are you OK with waiting for public beta? I thought it might not be a bad idea to have a few more folks from Phy.SE there to also help in its meta to refine its scope, or help migrate questions that are pure theoretical physics (there are a few of those).

@TildalWave That sort of thing is supposed to be on topic at Physics as well. Questions about experimental technology are okay for us. (In practice, we get few of them, so it's not always clear that they are.)

To be honest, the Physics community has been strongly opposed to the creation of a new astronomy site since the beginning, because it's a strict subset of what is on topic for us. Given that the SE team went ahead and started the site over our objections... I don't know, perhaps we will eventually eliminate astronomy from our scope, but so far nobody at Physics has expressed any interest in doing so.

Anyway I wouldn't really have any use for an invite to the Astro private beta.

@DavidZ Understood. And yes, those objections were mentioned before by @ManishEarth. I don't really wanna be in the middle of it either, but have declined my nomination for a pro tem for other reasons, mostly to not become partial to SEx.SE and being another beta with this one requiring enough attention already. I'm already not as active as I'd like to be on some other SE sites, like say Sec.SE. Phy.SE... I wish, but didn't even have the time to read much, and I'm subscribed to the newsletter.

@DavidZ "...eliminating astronomy..." Meh.... Losing Chris & Pulsar??? I don't think so... NEVERRR.... :P

@RoryAlsop Would you accept an Astro.SE mod nomination?

@TildalWave @Undo I personally feel that after the creation of Space.SE, any remaining "need" for Astro vanishes -- one reason why the astro proposal restarted was that the enthusiasts wanted their own place. Given that Space already handles a large chunk of Astro scope (and is more of an enthusiast site), Astro becomes unneeded.

@Manish As in the need for the site itself?

yep

So between space and physics we don't need Astro is what you're saying.

yep

sort of

I would have to disagree - if I were an astronomer, I wouldn't really want to wade through a bunch of Physics questions to find Astronomy questions to answer. Kind of like Apple.SE is a subset of SU, I think it's fine.

But ultimately the community team decides.

@Undo Which is why Space fits the bill pretty nicely

Actually, merging Astro and Space Ex into simply "Space" would be interesting

Frankly speaking, I can't seem to see much of a difference between the two, common-question wise

Which is why I'm saying all this :)

If Astro can survive on its own, great, but I'm not so sure it will.

I'm honestly not so sure about it either. I would kind of like your 'omni-space' site idea, though.

if the shoe fits...

@ManishEarth I don't know... I just don't know. One part of me is saying you're right, and the other part is thinking of the community that might largely be made out of completely different people, with large percentage of them never before even active on Phy.SE because they might find it slightly intimidating and "academic". So, no disrespect, but I'm not likely to make my mind up. I would love it to have the time to be on both sites more tho, on Phy.SE and Astro.SE. And a few more...

So in my view, we shouldn't be rolling them thermite barrels under their feet like the dudes in Breaking Bad didn't :)

I'm really not active on Phys, really

@ManishEarth That was once an idea here, but I think not wanting to be in the way of Phy.SE killed it

As it is now, I think that Space.SE found its place well enough scope-wise, and we even included planetary sciences (that aren't strictly theoretical physics, those we close and migrate you know that), hopefully that'll prove to be the right decision. So we're kinda cooperating nice with Phy.SE and I hope we can also establish scope for Astro.SE that will enable that. Astro.SE and Phy.SE tho,...

I guess that's more up to you guys from Phy.SE to determine how much of what Astro.SE is doing you could or would want to handle. So far, it's impossible to tell IMO

@TildalWave As mentioned before, we have incorporated the full scope of Astro into Phys. Not much left for us to decide

@TildalWave I know that Phy would be intimidating -- this is why there was a second Astro proposal in the first place.

I'm just saying that community-wise, Asto gels well with Space. And a scope-wise match may not be a bad idea :)

Just throwing my thoughts out there; I haven't yet fully thought about this.

@ManishEarth Well we don't want strictly theoretical stuff here anyway, it was so straight from the start. Possible "near-ish" future application OK, or if it's required to explain something while answering, but others than that it's not really on scope here and would be migrated to Phy.SE. It's hard to wrap in a single sentence tho, I think we're still working on that. :|

hmm

it's all circular

aaahh my eyes

@ManishEarth well don't poke them then :P

lol

Think I should organize my thoughts on this and meta post? Or just wait for the Astro private beta to finish?

Not thought too much about this yet

@ManishEarth I'm curious about what you meant there with that "Arduino" comment, so... post. Waiting is killing me! :)

Need to think about it. Not sure if the issue really exists

@ManishEarth Yup, this...

Basically, the community of askers/answers is pretty small. Especially answerers

@ManishEarth You didn't read much about the quantum field theory, did you? :P

?

@ManishEarth if it's in you head, it exists

well... and doesn't... at the same time

heh

teacher: "now kids, let's think of the Schroedinger's cat" :D

ö <- here it is

@Undo Oh - yes, of course. I meant to get around to self nom'ing but have been knocked down with the cold for the last week and been generally slow and crap

@RoryAlsop ouch you too? I'm just slowly getting on my feet... I've probably annoyed the t*ts out of everyone here during the last week

Balderdash. I'm not annoyed at all!

@Everyone hahahahaha

@RoryAlsop: (+: It seemed the right thing to say

right. i'm off to bed. 'night @All

@TildalWave You realize I already nominated him, right?

@Undo Hahahaha sorry I just saw it... still laughing my ass off :D

@TildalWave We have to keep both of them, you know :)

It's classic.

@RoryAlsop You might wanna know you've been nominated twice LOL

@PearsonArtPhoto I thought to remind you to mention what place you're writing those regulations for... that isn't the same here in Europe, for example. I didn't really check where OP is from either, so I thought to write it in general sense.

But +1 of course, it's a nice list and some of it quite surprising to me

Fair point.

I only just learned how relatively limited the laws are on such, I was surprised myself.