How do we know the mass of a planet originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Geoffrey Widdison on ...

At the end of the 1600s, Newton proposed the universal law of gravitation: that every particle attracts every other particle ...

Astronomers cannot directly weigh celestial objects like galaxies; indirect methods are necessary. Mass determination leverages the relationship between gravity and mass, utilizing orbital periods and ...

How heavy is the Milky Way galaxy? It may seem impossible to get a sense of it from our tiny little planet, but astronomers have their ways. Now a team has used data from Hubble and the Gaia satellite ...

Sometimes in astronomy, a simple question has a difficult answer. One such question is this: what is the mass of our galaxy? On Earth, we usually determine the mass of an object by placing it on a ...

As the New Horizons spacecraft is approaching Pluto, it's getting some great shots. The animation below shows Pluto and Charon as they orbit each other. When a planet (or dwarf planet) has a satellite ...

The mass of Stein 2051 B, a white dwarf star located about 18 light-years from Earth, has been a subject of some controversy for over a century. Now, a group of astronomers has finally made a precise ...

The theory was a huge breakthrough for our conception of space and time. It allowed for the prediction of black holes and the behavior of planets in orbit. So much of how we think about the universe ...

Newton's Second Law states that force equals mass times acceleration. This can be investigated using a set-up like this one. You can use this set-up to investigate how changing two separate factors, ...