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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 29, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I think we're in something of a golden age for astronomy right now, thanks to better telescopes and better computing power to analyze their data. Plus youtube channels to communicate that stuff to us laymen. So maybe not a surprise that we're just now finding all these weird quirky stars that until recently would have been too small to identify. And of course it's easier to see those things if their nearby, compared to a distant galaxy where the best you could see is a huge quasar.

One thing unusual about our neighborhood is that it sits in the local bubble of unusually deep vacuum, which makes astronomy easier. And on a larger scale there's the local void where there's unusually few galaxies nearby.

One thing unusual about our neighborhood is that it sits in the local bubble of unusually deep vacuum, which makes astronomy easier. And on a larger scale there's the local void where there's unusually few galaxies nearby.

On the other hand, we're blocked from what'd be probably the most fascinating view by interstellar dust clouds between us and the galactic core. We win some, we lose some.

I just wish some astronomy apps had a simulation of "This is what we'd see if there weren't those damned clouds in between".