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The greatest elongation of a given inferior planet occurs when this planet's position, in its orbital path around the Sun, is at tangent to the observer on Earth. Since an inferior planet is well within the area of Earth's orbit around the Sun, observation of its elongation should not pose that much a challenge (compared to deep-sky objects, for example).
This glossary of astronomy is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to astronomy and cosmology, their sub-disciplines, and related fields. Astronomy is concerned with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth. The field of astronomy features an extensive vocabulary and a ...
In astrodynamics, the orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a dimensionless parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle.
Coordinate systems in astronomy can specify an object's relative position in three-dimensional space or plot merely by its direction on a celestial sphere, if the object's distance is unknown or trivial. Spherical coordinates, projected on the celestial sphere, are analogous to the geographic coordinate system used on the surface of Earth.
The apsides refer to the farthest (2) and nearest (3) points reached by an orbiting planetary body (2 and 3) with respect to a primary, or host, body (1). An apsis (from Ancient Greek ἁψίς (hapsís) 'arch, vault'; pl. apsides / ˈ æ p s ɪ ˌ d iː z / AP-sih-deez) [1] [2] is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body.
The superbubble Henize 70, also known as N70 or DEM301, in the Large Magellanic Cloud [1]. In astronomy a superbubble or supershell is a cavity which is hundreds of light years across and is populated with hot (10 6 K) gas atoms, less dense than the surrounding interstellar medium, blown against that medium and carved out by multiple supernovae and stellar winds.
Elongation may refer to: Elongation (astronomy) Elongation (geometry) Elongation (plasma physics) Part of transcription of DNA into RNA of all types, including mRNA, tRNA, rRNA, etc. Part of translation (biology) of mRNA into proteins; Elongated organisms; Elongation (mechanics), linear deformation
Distance measurements in astronomy have historically been and continue to be confounded by considerable measurement uncertainty. In particular, while stellar parallax can be used to measure the distance to nearby stars, the observational limits imposed by the difficulty in measuring the minuscule parallaxes associated with objects beyond our galaxy meant that astronomers had to look for ...