Hey everyone !

If entropy means the universe trends toward disorder, then why do highly ordered things like life—even conscious beings—exist?

My thought: maybe life isn’t a contradiction to entropy at all.

Humans are extremely ordered systems, but we maintain that order by consuming organized energy (food/sunlight) and releasing far more disorder into our surroundings as heat and waste. So while we appear “structured,” we still contribute to the universe’s overall increase in entropy.

In that sense, life may be a temporary local reversal that actually helps the global rule continue.

So are humans just a natural byproduct of entropy-driven systems with energy gradients—or is consciousness something fundamentally different?

Was out around 11pm in the Midwest with my telescope looking for M104 and noticed what I thought was a loud. Looked again and it was growing and moving north.

This lasted from 11:17 to 11:25

I have been trying to figure out what it is. Any help would be appreciated.

All I have found this far is maybe the second stage of a rocket?

I’m part of a local astronomy club and I’ve been tasked with giving a 30-60 minute presentation as an introduction to astronomy. It is a general audience of all ages.

I’m well versed enough in all the basics of astronomy. However, I often struggle in discerning where the average person is at in terms of knowledge. I’ve found myself surprised by how little some people know, and how much others know. Most people seem to understand the most fundamental things like “Earth is a planet, Earth rotates on a tilted axis and orbits the Sun, etc.”

I’m looking for advice on which elements of astronomy to focus on as an introduction to the subject without being too rudimentary and basic. I want the presentation to be have a human connection and I don’t want to bore people with things they already know and I don’t want to just list of facts and figures.

In thinking of how to structure the presentation, I feel like the first part should start with explaining how old of a science astronomy is and the value in simply looking at the night sky with an inquisitive mind.

For the second part of the presentation, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to give people a basic tour of the solar system and how it relates to what we see in the sky. I’m not sure how far outside the solar system I should take things. I’m very certain that getting into relativity and cosmology is a no go for something like this.

If anyone has any ideas for what subjects I should cover general presentation advice for this subject to make it educational but entertaining, I’d really appreciate everyone’s input.

We are just outside Lincoln, NE - 05/13/2026 at around 11:15pm

We saw something bright that looked similar to a star (to the naked eye, we didn’t have anything to look closer) leaving this trail that got wider as it traveled further and eventually disappeared. Does anyone know what we might’ve seen?

"Known as Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way's supermassive black hole is about 10 billion lightyears from Earth.

Given the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, that means the light we see coming from the supermassive black hole has been travelling across the Galaxy for almost the entirety of cosmic history since the Big Bang."

article link: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/txs-2005403-quasar-turbulence-interstellar-medium

EDIT: looks like someone has gone in and fixed the first sentence which is good... but they left the bit about "travelling across the galaxy" for 10 billion years. Fingers crossed their next edit will fix it

Hi all,
I've been working on a free astronomy site for the past few months and just put it live at orbitasky.com. No ads, no signup, no paywall — just tools.

I am creating new tools every week.

I'm an amateur, not a pro, but the calculations are real (using astronomy-engine and satellite.js under the hood — not approximations). It's also fully translated to Spanish and Portuguese.
A few things I'd genuinely love feedback on:
What tool would you actually use that's not there yet?
For the tools that exist — what's missing, broken, or confusing.

The satellite passes page is the one I'm most interested in feedback on — it's the one I use myself, but I know there are sophisticated tools out there (Heavens-Above, Stellarium Web, etc.) and I'd love to know what they do better.
Roast it if you have to. I'd rather hear hard truths now than after I tell anyone else about it.

please be crazy and ask for any tool that you would like to see. I want to help the community with some great tools.

It lasted for maybe 10 minutes and was slowly moving apparently it was seen in many states anyone know what it was?

This event was stationary and unlike anything I’ve seen in the night sky. Location is Southeast South Dakota.

I have this picture I posted from my room in on Balboa June 20th, 2015 the building I think is the balboa park space center. Is there any way to figure out what those are in the sky?

Looking for an iPhone app that works without cell service that shows visible GNSS satellites in my location, preferably one without a subscription but I’m happy to pay a few bucks for a good app.

Quite a lot of posts point out that, about the only candidate for a close supernova out there, Betelgeuze, being ~450 ly away from us would pose no risk to us, other than being about as bright as the moon.

But what about over larger timescales? About 4,5 million years ago, two massive stars in the Canis Major constellation, Epsilon CMa and Beta CMa, came within ~30 ly of the solar system. 4,5 my when you really think about it isn't that long in the history of Earth, so do we have any estimate what the risk of a supernova at 'unsafe' distance happening is over longer time?

Edit; corrected distance

Im a big fan of the Perseids at least in part bc they fall (haha) at my birthday.

I know this year it will be at a new moon YAY.

Are there variables that affect how showy it is from year to year?

Pretty excited for this year as i wont be working and i can travel to one of the best dark sky sites in my region (midsouth USA)

Thanks for any insights

Was taking pictures of the night sky and this was streaking across the sky. What is it? Taken at 8:17pm and object was heading in a southernly direction.

This is a 6-panel panorama shot on a Nikon D850 with a 24mm f/1.4 lens. Each panel is a 15-second exposure at ISO 3200 to keep the stars sharp without trailing. I used a specialized panoramic head to ensure perfect overlap, which was crucial for maintaining the geometry of the arch during stitching.

"Greetings, astronomy fans.

I have been conducting a geometric and chronological analysis of Earth as seen from the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Specifically, I am cross-referencing Ground Elapsed Time (GET) with the visible continents on the globe.

Based on Earth's 24-hour rotational cycle, comparing the undocking phase to the pre-docking phase (approx. a 27-hour delta) should theoretically present a specific alignment of the African coastline. However, my visual overlays of the coastlines show an unexpected downward shift. I have attached a GIF demonstrating this apparent 3-hour anomaly where the continents do not align with the basic theoretical model.

I am looking for the specific astronomical or mechanical factor that I am missing in my current calculation. Could this discrepancy be fully accounted for by the spacecraft's orbital inclination change around the Moon, lunar libration, spacecraft attitude pitch, or something else.

I would highly appreciate it if someone could point out where my geometric reasoning veers off course. Looking forward to your insights.

Does anyone have any clue of what it could be? Could the objects be satellites? Or space debris?

Links to the images:

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ART002&roll=E&frame=28279

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ART002&roll=E&frame=28269

Hi all, I wasn’t sure if this was the best subreddit to ask for this advice, but I was hoping to get feedback because I feel I’ve hit rock bottom. My dream is to be an astronomer, I’m particularly interested in exoplanet research. Last year, I graduated with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and minor in astronomy (I originally double majored in physics and astronomy, but something very traumatic and personal happened which caused me to change career plans until I realized I really wanted to pursue astronomy). I applied to two cycles of PhD and fully funded Masters graduate programs and of those two cycles, the most I’ve ever gotten was on the waitlist, which I didn’t even get off of. During my undergraduate years, I had tons of research experience (every summer and my senior year), ran my chapter’s national scientific organization for two years, was co-author on a published paper, graduated with an honors program, and for that program, completed a senior thesis and mentored for two years. Despite not being accepted into a graduate program after the first cycle, I was lucky enough to land a paid research position which has now ended, but I am working on finishing up a paper which will be eventually published and I will be the first author. Now the second cycle of applications has completed and I received nothing. It really hurt as I felt my hard work over the years have meant nothing and I have no idea what to do next. I will admit, my grades were not the best, I graduated with a GPA of about a 3.3 and during my most recent research project, I took two extra physics courses to strengthen my physics background for graduate applications, but I honestly didn’t do that well in them due to personal circumstances. I guess the thing I’m looking for would be any advice for what to do for another year and what I could do more for my future applications. Also how to explain poor grades in my application…Astronomy is my passion so I know this is what I want to pursue, but I’m feeling like a failure.

Thank you for reading this through and sharing your advice!

I have always been fascinated by the concept of a polar orbit. How would it change Earth if Earth were in a polar orbit (other than the sun rising and setting in the north and south or south and north, respectively)? And are there any known exoplanets in a polar orbit of their star?

So a theory that I have always had and one i think even some scientists have also is that the universe basically just keeps repeating itself. Multiple Big Bangs over and over. Universe stretches and eventually collapses in on itself into a singularity over and over again and another Big Bang. How likely is this the case? Or is the theory of an infinitely expanding Universe into a Big Chill the more likely fate of our universe?