text:
At what point does up voting become serial?
I think that some of my up votes here may have been reversed for being serial? I want to be sure not to break any rules whilst achieving the badge for up voting. That maybe how I got suspension in Physics.SE for voter fraud?  Is there a definition on serial up voting and does it differ than down votes?
P.S. I very rarely down vote.

(approx) 10 in a day seems to trigger the automatic reversal script (which in turn flags the moderators to look at your voting patterns). Mods can also see who you've voted for, so if you're repeatedly upvoting a particular individual in a way that seems hinky, that might earn you a suspension

@Valorum I'm sure it did! All I got as far as a warning or reprimand was a vague I had committed voting fraud but didn't say when and where. I had no idea up voting incorrectly could equal a suspension. Wow. That should be an answer somewhere. I should be able to up vote without consequence.

Slightly related: if another user is in the process of closing one of your questions, or helping you reopen it, and (presumably by coincidence) you up vote ten of their posts in two minutes on another SE site, it can look bad for both you and the other user. Please at least consider the other user's request to not up vote en masse their posts. In this case it doesn't matter what you were "trying to do" as much as matters what it could look like you are trying to do to others.

A suspension for vote fraud means you must have done something much worse than serial voting!

@RoryAlsop I didn't!!

The exact definition is kept secret, but basically, a serial voting reversal happens when the StackExchange software thinks you've been voting based on who provided the questions/answers, rather than based on what those posts say.
If you're trying to get one of the voting badges, that means you should avoid finding things to vote on from a user's profile, or from a single tag.  Instead, use the main question list, or wander through the "related questions" links from an interesting question.

At a guess?  I've seen someone report a serial voting reversal after three votes, so two votes in a single day should be safe under all circumstances.  You can probably go well above that, if your votes on a single user are mixed in with thirty or forty votes on other users.

@Muze The PSE mods/CMs probably watched you. Although mods have no access to induvidual votes, they have some tools to detect voting irregularities, whose details they don't say. They have at least a feature to know, who voted an induvidual at most. If they have hyphotesis that X and Y accounts are cross-voting eachother, they can validate it. They can also ask the CMs. The CMs can see induvidual votes, except the ones to their own posts. All the CMs are SE employee.

I'm aware of a set of targeted votes that were reversed even though there were fewer than three votes on any particular day. Vote for content, not for people.


text:
Links to old questions are redirected to unrelated new questions
I came across an old answer on Skeptics SE that has two puzzling links to Astronomy SE:

It seems that I have finally found the answer to my question courtesy of another SE site: Is there a way to create an artificial solar eclipse?
[…]
What's more interesting, is that in the Simpsons Montgomery Burns has a device to create solar eclipses. This could be really the source of this legend, especially since the idea of the eclipse is absolutely in unison with what is (still) going on there in North Korea.

Strangely enough, these two links go to two completely different questions/answers than what appears to have been the original target:

Is there a way to create an artificial solar eclipse? → What would we find if we could travel 786 trillion light years in any direction
device to create solar eclipses → A clock travelling "faster than the speed of light"

I tried to find the relevant questions so that I could edit the original answer with the correct links, but I can't even find any similar questions here on Astronomy SE. What's going on? I must assume that the links were correct at the time of posting!

The answer there is from 2012, which is before the launch of the current Astronomy SE. There was an early attempt of an Astronomy SE that flopped, and I assume those were links to that site. I don't know if there are still archives of that site around anywhere. That would be a good question for Meta Stack Exchange.

After some digging I found that "its content has been merged into Physics", where I found the former question intact. Thanks!

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Do we want accepted answers to be pinned to the top?
Stack Exchange staff have announced an upcoming change to the way answer acceptance works.
Currently, the original poster of a question can accept one non-deleted answer. This does several things,

the question poster receives 2 rep, and the answer poster receives 15 rep
the answer has an added green tick mark below its score and vote buttons
the answer itself is pinned to the top of the list of answers, regardless of sort variable

This change will affect the last of these behaviours, removing the "pin to top". Staff have indicated this may be configurable per site - each individual site can have this behaviour turned off or left on (with the default setting yet to be determined by consensus and research).
Please indicate by voting on the answers below, which setting you would prefer.
Downvotes will be ignored for this purpose, as they add no useful information. Just upvote one, or both or neither.
Feedback will be collated on September 19th, giving seven days to make a decision.

To help us decide, here is a SEDE query, created by Nihar Karve & Emilio Pisanty from Physics.SE:
Questions with accepted answer pinned above highest scoring answer
The query shows the results for Physics by default, but you can ask for the results for any main or meta site.
You may also like to browse the parallel question on Physics meta.

Unpinning has now been implemented.

This question and its answers were derived from the template created by Nij on Sports.SE, and mentioned here

Here's a link to the MSO post with the results of the A/B test on unpinning.

I support removing "pin to top" as I think it's confusing on science sites. In fact, I'd change the checkmark symbol to a different symbol if I could. The "accept" indicates what the asker found most helpful, which is a good feature to have, but the checkmark symbol and "pin to top" imply correctness that isn't always the case on a science site.

@called2voyage Comments are certainly welcome!

@called2voyage "I'd change the checkmark symbol to a different symbol if I could" - good idea! Alternatively, if changing the checkmark isn't possible, then maybe the top-voted answer could receive a checkmark of a different colour (gold? silver? blue?) to denote it to be the "community-accepted" answer?

@AaronF There's a current MSE question: Should the 'accept' icon be updated?. Changing the icon is not very popular, at present.

@PM2Ring To be clear, I don't think it should be changed site wide. I think it should be an option for it not to be a check on some sites. Which I know is a bigger change for SE to implement, so probably even a more hare-brained idea, but that's how I feel about it.

@called2voyage Ah, ok. For the past few years they've been moving to simplifying themes and making the sites more uniform, through the Stacks design framework. Prior to 2018, graduated sites could have their own custom accept icon, but that's been eliminated. FWIW, here's a recent staff post on site themes.

@PM2Ring Yeah, I knew about the unified design, just wish that feature was customizable.

Obviously, I can't vote on the answers below, but I suppose I should mention that I support unpinning the accepted answer.

I have posted our "Unpin" verdict to the table on Meta Stack Exchange.

Finally! I had long ago given up on advocating for showing the highest rated answer first instead of the selected answer.

Remove the "pin to top" behaviour.
I want this behaviour to be removed. An accepted answer should be sorted in the same way as all answers.

Keep the "pin to top" behaviour.
I want this behaviour to be kept. An accepted answer should be placed at the top of the list.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
"MathJax help" link is broken
When the user is asking or editing a question, a "MathJax help" link is present on the right-hand side of the screen. The link is to http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/
Currently, this only leads to a "Page Not Found" screen.
There are Wayback Machine archived copies of the page, for example https://web.archive.org/web/20190118085736/http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/ - perhaps the link could be updated to point to that?
Thanks,
Astrid.

If this shows up on multiple sites, then it might be a good idea to post in the "main meta" site.

I'd better check the other sites - that hadn't occurred to me. Thanks for that - if it is a SE-wide problem instead of Astronomy.SE-specific, then I have indeed posted this in the wrong place.

@uhoh It is indeed site-wide - fortunately someone else posted on the main meta, and the link now points to http://legacy-www.math.harvard.edu/texman/ - I've asked if the SE staff member who fixed it would like to post an answer here so I can accept it.

Great! If you like, you can simply repost that information as an answer (include the link to the question in meta) and accept it as well, this will help future readers see quickly that it's been addressed (especially those that don't read comments).

As I noted over yonder, this has been fixed now.
Thanks for the report, and please join me in thanking rene for digging up the archived page!


text:
Request to enable MathJax on this site
Got to come up sooner or later. MathJax is pretty useful, especially when one needs to include some astrophysics in the answer. Can we have it?

AKA, Manishearth just joined this site. ;-)

@JonEricson We have updated the answers here, and we are curious if you can give us an update on whether MathJax might be made available to us soon.

@called2voyage: $ soon = now $ ;)

@JonEricson Noted, and I have been updating a number of answers.

Thanks a bunch guys for adding support for MathJax, it really makes many of the questions/answers far more legible.

$$
\sum_{first}^{last}{answer} = yes
$$

$\left|\mathbb{B R I L L I A N T} \right|$

To emphasize the intimate link between astronomy and mathematics, I'll post a scan of a cheat sheet for Astronomy 150 from Andy's useful astronomy/physics/math cheat sheets page, a (formerly) junior-level astronomy college course at Harvard on radiative processes in astrophysics:

This is one of four cheat sheets for this class, this being the first and least-mathematical. Astrophysical processes are almost entirely understood by the light we collect, and thus I cannot emphasize enough its importance. The vast majority of astronomy-related questions cannot be answered without at least basic Algebra, the representation of which is cumbersome without a built-in LaTeX interpreter (e.g. MathJax).
I agree that the "genie will be out of the bottle" by enabling LaTeX, but frankly I am highly skeptical that this Stack Exchange will succeed without the involvement of the professional community. Professional astronomy has a strong outreach component, and I know that many of my peers will be more willing to participate knowing that they can give complete, well-annotated answers to the questions raised here, as opposed to being encouraged to answer without the use of math to avoid the logistical headache of generating graphics externally.

Out of curiosity, what's the formula for relative aperture of a pinhole camera doing in the astronomy cheat sheet (penultimate line from the bottom)?

@Guillochon Well said, and I concur! I had to memorize this for my PhD comprehensive examination... Brings back memories :)

Questions which would benefit from a mathjaxy answer
(Updated 10/14 - Feel free to add more.)

How do I calculate the inclination of an object with an amateur telescope?
How to calculate the movement of the object passing near other object in space?
What is a parsec and how is it measured?
How is it known that Callisto has no core?
What is the formula to predict lunar and solar eclipses accurately?
Effect of Charon on Pluto
Determining effect of small variable force on planetary perihelion precession
How much oxygen did the Warwick/Cambridge study find in the rocky debris around white dwarf GD 61?

List of examples:

Determining effect of small variable force on planetary perihelion precession (formula looks awful right now)
Another example where it would be useful; the OP explicitely asked for a formula (and my answer is poorly typesetted with no math typesetting support)
How much oxygen did the Warwick/Cambridge study find in the rocky debris around white dwarf GD 61? (molecules would look better with proper subscripts)
How to calculate the movement of the object passing near other object in space?
...

Astronomy is physics in the end of the day, and physics strongly relies on math... You can explain a lot of things with words rather than equations, but at some point you cannot avoid to use them for clarity or to have a deeper understanding of some physical process. If the site would aim only at amateur astronomers, I would say that it could be OK (or even better) to avoid equations and focus on simple explanations in English, but since it also aims at professional astronomers, it is just unavoidable to use equations at some point.

Nice Job putting together this proposal. This has been…
$$
\Huge DONE
$$

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Feature request: add marvosym package to our MathJax set (for celestial body symbols)
Shameless copy from SF.'s question on Space Meta:
\usepackage{marvosym} allows you to write M_\Sun or r_\Earth to have variables annotated with celestial body symbols. It would be surely nice to have in the mark-up.
The list of planet symbols included is as follows:

\Sun \Moon \Mercury \Venus \Mars \Jupiter \Saturn \Uranus \Neptune \Pluto \Earth

Would it be much trouble to include this package in our set, so that this would work?:
$M_\Sun = 1.989e30 kg$

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Is there any way to tell which questions a deleted user effected?
Recently a user got deleted and I would like to see which questions that has effected. When I delete my account does this also happen to other users?

Nope, and this is by design. Because it's possible that users may know which user had votes invalidated or an account removed, revealing which posts were voted on and how reveals their voting history, which is a big problem. As such, we can not show you this information.
Any time that a user deletes their account and has cast votes, those votes are generally removed upon deletion. For some users with large voting histories, we will review their account before deletion and sometimes retain those votes. This is handled on a case-by-case basis.

Were my votes casted reversed on the accounts I renewed recently?


text:
Can we have 3 flags destruction for some time?
This site has attracted extra spam in the past few months. As the current case is on English Language & Usage and The Workplace, only 3 flags are required before a spam or offensive post is nuked. Can we have the same mechanism here so spams don't last too long before it pollutes more?
Related: What's with the amount of spam here?
For a list of recent spams caught by SmokeDetector, see here. Note it's possible that Smokey missed some of them.

Note: If this is getting implemented, please inform us (the Charcoal team) before actually carrying it out so that we can reduce our autoflagging number to 1, so as not to unilaterally nuke any post.

Changed tag to feature-request to get attention of admins

99.59% TP rate on Astronomy (981tp 4fp)


text:
To earn the 'Tumbleweed' badge, what counts as 'low views'?
I've been searching for my next badge, and I came across the Tumbleweed badge, which has the following requirements to earn:
ask a question with:

a score of 0
no answers
no comments
low views

for a week.

What counts as 'low views'?

I'm asking for a quantity.

One data point: I got the Tumbleweed badge on a question with 90 views.

@called2voyage - It's a low number of views in a week that count, not the total. Were it not for your comment (and now mine), this question would have been a good tumbleweed candidate (zero score, no answers, and asked in a very low traffic corner of the SE network).

@David Hammen - but it also says 'no comments', so this question would not win it. But it's weird that it's a bronze badge, even though it's moderately difficult to earn.

@Imtherealsanic - It's a door prize, and a consolation one at that. That said, I believe the "no comments" means no comments during the week during which the view number is low rather than no comments ever.

so you're telling me that if somebody comments after the badge is earned, it won't effect you?

@Imtherealsanic Badges are, generally, never revoked. So yes, a comment, extra views, or score changes won't affect an already awarded badge.

Tumbleweed no longer exists as a badge.  This question is now obsolete.

From the FAQ on Meta Stack Exchange: List of all badges with full descriptions:

Ask a question that after its first week of existence has score of 0, no answers, no comments and no more than 60 views.


text:
What does astronomy meta thinks of community wiki?
I can't find that discussion back, but at least stack overflow (the granddady of stack exchanges), I seem to recall community wikis were not an encouraged practice.
Is the astronomy SE against, neutral or pro community wikis?
I think the gist of the opposition against community wiki is that much of the same could be achieved by proposing edits to an existing good answer, but then all the reputations etc. which is an important part of the general workings of an exchange isn't really included anymore.
The general SE meta post on community wiki

Community wiki is a valuable tool for answers in some cases, but we do not use it on questions. In some cases the best way to arrive at an answer is by the collaboration of multiple users, that is when community wiki becomes a useful tool--because the post is no longer perceived as being primarily the view of a single author.


text:
Threshold for site graduation?
We've been in beta for almost 8 years. A look at Astronomy's vitals on Area 51 shows this:

Our beloved Astronomy SE can't graduate until these issues have been resolved:

We only have 5.3 questions per day, which is on the low end of the "Okay" section.
90% percent of the questions are answered, so we only need to answer a few more questions (108, to be exact)
Each question only has 1.6 answers on average, while a healthy beta needs at least 2.5.

Do we have any solutions that can solve these problems within a timescale (preferably within the next 2 years)?

SE has told us repeatedly over the past several years not to use those metrics as a guideline for site graduation anymore.

@called2voyage Okay, so do you have any suggestions on how to improve the site? One important section I am thinking of regards answering unanswered questions.

Improve the site for the site's sake, not for graduation's sake. SE has said there's really nothing we can do to speed up graduation. In other words, focus on making quality questions and answers when you ask or answer, help edit other people's posts when appropriate, make sure questions are tagged well and that unnecessary tags don't get created, etc.

I know that's a boring answer. Sometimes the boring answers are the right ones.

further reading: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites

More recently: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/344432/228367

As called2voyage has pointed out, those metrics are both obsolete and . . . honestly, kinda awful when it comes to determining whether a site should really graduate. If I can steal the syntax of a particular Jack Sparrow quote, a community isn't just questions and answers and users and tags. That's what a community needs, but what a community really is . . . is something else, something intangible. I don't know what it is - a group of users? A place to interact? A set of established norms? All of the above? Something more abstract? It seems like a foolish question to ask, and maybe even a trivial one. But I've been trying to figure it out for about seven years now, and I'm really no closer to a simple well-defined answer.
I joined Worldbuilding at the very start of its public beta in the fall of 2014, and when it graduated a bit over a year later, it felt like it was ready. Granted, that graduation was triggered because we had consistently maintained the requisite question levels, those 10 questions per day, and this was in the age when these metrics were still driving graduation decisions. But we also had that little something extra, and fortunately, intuition about whether a site has that intangible edge has always been taken into account when making decisions about graduation. It wasn't just that our stats were good. I could feel it.
Even if graduation was still part of a site's expected life cycle - and it certainly isn't anymore, let's be clear - I don't think that at the moment, we have what it would take to reach that point. More relevant to your question, I can't even put my finger on what it is that we're lacking, what Worldbuilding had that we don't. Maybe we don't have enough users, or enough questions. Maybe we haven't really created a culture here that would survive many of the most prominent users suddenly disappearing in a puff of smoke (or a supernova - take your pick). I think it's all of those and then some.
Reflecting on it, I'm really glad that the idea of graduation has faded. Those stats (more like guidelines, as Mr. Gibbs would say) are certainly characteristic of many graduated sites, but don't mistake correlation for causation. You can achieve them without building a truly healthy, successful, stable community. As called2voyage said, let's just work towards a better site; if it really is crucial to the site's success, maybe we'll find the missing piece. But keep in mind that whether a site graduates is ultimately a meaningless, artificial and arbitrary goal. Whether a site is healthy and stable - well, ultimately, that means everything.

Well said! And I agree, we don't seem to have that special sauce here yet. I see some positive signs, but it's not something you can force. I just hope the signs I'm seeing reflect more growth (read: maturity, not numbers) to come!

+n! In An “Escalate to an Astronomer (in related field)” button? and more recently and "focusedly" How can we can bring questions about radio astronomy observational techniques to the eyes of radio telescopists? I've touched on how to reach out to more astronomers (which should certainly include the more numerous graduate students as well). Many astronomers use twitter but I wonder if most folks here are not adept tweeters. Maybe we need a "social media officer" to help promote us.

(note: all of his is about community-building, not graduation) I have no idea how social media works (I still don't really even understand how Stack Exchange tags work) but if there were a way to tweet-reply a Stack Exchange question to a popular Astronomy tweet, it may raise visibility and then awareness of our existence (and relevance). Maybe I will post a new mesa question "Does anybody here tweet much? If so, would you like to help us promote the site and bring in more astronomers?"

Of course academics are always already too busy, but if we can make participation more attractive and enticing somehow...

@uhoh I have a decent presence on Twitter, including some astronomy followers. Not sure how much I want to rep Astro SE over there though.

@called2voyage kudos! (and oh, you do!) I'm terrified of social media, it took me a half-decade to even get half-way used to being uhoh in Stack Exchange :-)


text:
Are there any IAU members on the astronomy stack exchange?
Are there any members of the International Astronomical Union that are active on  the Astronomy Stack Exchange?

At least none of them have that information in their profile.

It is not considered good behavior to ask members for personal information, like if they are a member or a particular organization.  Note this could be interpreted as "phishing".  As you don't provide any profile info yourself it's doubly inappropriate to ask others for personal info.

Are you a republican? I have some questions...

Nice one, @RobJeffries.

Closing the question prevents people from posting answers. Considering that (at least) one user has already posted a well-received answer, closing is a bad idea. voting to leave open!

I am an IAU Member but a lot of professional astronomers, particularly junior scientists, aren't. The membership rules are slightly weird/archaic. You can only apply to join every three years when they are going to be holding the General Assembly (Past General Assemblies, next General Assembly will be in Busan, Korea in 2021). You have to submit a qualified application to the national astronomy body in the country you are practicing astronomy in, normally with a deadline of ~December in the previous year. (For me this meant to the National Academies as the USA National Committee for Astronomy (NCA) even though I am British and got my Astronomy PhD in the UK).


text:
2021 Moderator Election Q&A - Question suggestions
Taking a look at other Stack Exchange elections, it seems like they all have "Moderator Q&A," where candidates answer questions about moderating, allowing voters to see what kind of person they are looking at. So I am wondering, are we going to have these questions? If so, answer down below to share some potential questions.

Moderator Q&As are always user led. It's definitely a good idea! I strongly encourage and support using the answer space here to gather questions.

@ConnorGarcia Moderator Election Q&A is where nominees answer the questions selected by (existing moderators? other users?). Here is where users can suggest questions to put there.

@ConnorGarcia I'm not sure, so let's wait for someone else to confirm.

@ConnorGarcia & fasterthanlight - Happy to see you both throw your hat in the ring! Looking forward to seeing how things go. :)

@called2voyage As to what Rosie said in her answer, "If we have more than one nominee we can certainly post questions and even start an election chat room at that time if it would be beneficial."
As Connor Garcia and I have nominated ourselves, should we go ahead and put up the questions, or are we going to leave it as is?

@fasterthanlight Let's wait for the nominations to close. If it's just you two, I'm not entirely sure a formal questionnaire is necessary.

@called2voyage Ok, sounds good :)

@ConnorGarcia Unfortunately fasterthanlight will not be running. I was looking forward to seeing you both run.

@ConnorGarcia Congrats on becoming our fourth moderator!

Victor Stafusa requested that I answer the moderator questions even though I ran unopposed in the recent election.  I think this is an excellent idea and could also serve as sort of a deeper introduction of myself to the community.  I will start by answering FasterThanLight's questions and then answer my own!
FTL’s questions

Moderation takes time, and dedication. How much time do you plan on setting aside for moderation, what are your expectations for
moderating, what time zone do you live in?

I don’t plan to set aside specific time for moderation, but instead to burn down flags whenever I log on prior to asking and answering questions.  My expectations are for it to be a significant time investment while I learn how to moderate, but then trail off as I learn how to do it.  I typically am on ASE (Astronomy Stack Exchange) from 1800-2300 Mountain.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

As little as necessary? The members do most of the work, like closing questions, deleting inappropriate posts, etc...  I think a moderator needs to step in when questions need to be migrated, when Spam accounts need to be deleted, or when the very rare instances of fighting, harassment, or abuse need to be handled.

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you
will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about
that?

I am fine having the diamond on previous posts.  I’ve made my share of mistakes on this site, but I believe I’ve always treated everyone respectfully.  I would prefer to never make technical mistakes, but occasionally I have, and I am not ashamed of them. Already, I am finding myself taking much more care about what I post as a moderator than what I posted before.

What is the difference between getting high reputation and unlocking special privileges and becoming a moderator?

Getting high rep for members grants them privileges to allow them to help moderate the site.  They are expected to help with moderation, but are not explicitly required to do so.  However, moderation is an explicit requirement for moderators.  I would say that moderators’ abilities are more powers (that accompany their corresponding responsibilities), than privileges due to reputation.  Of course, moderators have more power than high rep users, but as Ursula K LeGuin's Ogion said to Ged, "Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!"

If a situation was handled poorly, what would you do as a moderator?

If the resulting resolution was under my purview as a moderator, I would try to reach a resolution that was fair and agreed upon by the parties involved, if possible.

As a moderator, what can you do to make this site better?

I think it’s the members who ask great questions and give great answers who make the site the best it can be.  The moderators can only enable this by keeping the site free from harassment and spam, and help keep the site focused on astronomy! Like a sys admin, if everything is working flawlessly, we should be mostly invisible.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

I think my strengths are treating people with respect, allowing others to have the last word without letting my ego get in the way, and giving people the benefit of the doubt.  However, I am certainly not a push-over in a technical disagreement.  If I can be shown to be wrong, I will admit it, apologize, fix or delete my post, and move on!
For weaknesses (is there a limit on post length?), I am prone to fixate on minor details and take an answer way too far.  Sometimes I post answers that are contrarian to our mainstream understanding of astronomy.  I am guilty of the occasional construction of a subversive coordinate system.  I like the underdog and strange astronomy questions, so I tend to try to rehabilitate questions other members have begun to close.

Is there anything that has happened in your Stack Exchange experience that really changed you (or the way you think)?

Yes, I used to think academia was the best way to learn something in a STEM field.  I’ve learned so much from ASE in the last six months, I am now convinced it is also a great way to learn.  I have definitely learned more from trying to answer questions than I have from asking.  Stack Exchange makes me think about the learning value of deep reflection into difficult problems, sometimes for weeks or months.
Connor Garcia’s questions

Who is the Astronomy Stack Exchange for? Is it for students or teachers? Experts or novices? Is it for the questioners or the
answerers? Or is it mostly for the silent audience who neither votes
nor comments, but composes the majority of the views?

The ASE is for all of the above and is really for anyone who with an internet connection and a curiosity about the wonderful field of astronomy!  Also, I don’t think we need trade-offs where we value one group’s stake in the site over another groups.  There is room on the site for novices to ask simple homework problems up to professional astronomers asking sophisticated questions about the state of the field.  Each person can skip to the questions and answers that interest them personally, with the help of tags!

Suppose a question is on-topic, but a bit confused, contradictory, lacking detail or poorly expressed. When should we make an attempt to
help the author "rehab" the question and when should we vote to close?

If the question is clearly out of scope then I think it should be closed or migrated.  If it is clearly a duplicate, I think it is fine to close it as such.  If it is clearly spam or clearly written to advance the writer's own personal theories or fringe anti-science theories, I think it should be closed.
Otherwise, for good faith questions, I think we should make a good faith effort to help the author to clarify.  Sometimes the same misconceptions that prevent us from understanding something make it difficult to ask a clear question about it!

Since you have been appointed anyway, how would you answer these questions?

These are some great and thoughtful questions. We don't require a questions for Pro Tempore elections because unlike elections on graduated sites, these elections do not have to be competitive.
If we have more than one nominee we can certainly post questions and even start an election chat room at that time if it would be beneficial.
We don't have any nominees at the moment so if anyone who is eligible is interested in throwing their hat in the ring, we encourage you to do so. We'll extend the nomination period next week if there are no nominees at that time.

Maybe these may help (some formulated by myself, others taken from other Q&A's):

Moderation takes time, and dedication. How much time do you plan on setting aside for moderation, what are your expectations for moderating, what time zone do you live in?
In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
What is the difference between getting high reputation and unlocking special privileges and becoming a moderator?
If a situation was handled poorly, what would you do as a moderator?
As a moderator, what can you do to make this site better?
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Is there anything that has happened in your Stack Exchange experience that really changed you (or the way you think)?

If it helps factor into the decision on the new mod, my time zone is Eastern Time, U.S. I'm usually on Monday-Friday, but I'm also sometimes available Saturday and Sunday (just not Saturday evening). I'm most available from 8 AM to 5 PM, but also usually can be reached between 8 PM and 10 PM.

I usually only see flags during the 8 AM to 5 PM time frame on weekdays, but if I'm pinged during other times I may log on to respond to something urgent.


text:
Congratulations Astronomy Stack Exchange for 10k questions!
I just checked the question count, and discovered that we hit 10k overnight (well actually a few hours after 0:00 UTC) :D
So I just want to say congratulations to everyone here, the moderators, all our contributors at this site, for making Stack Exchange a better place for everybody. CONGRATS FOR 10,000 QUESTIONS!
P.S. Can we get to 15k before [Please comment down below and take a guess]???

According to Are 51, we have a question rate of 6.7 questions per day, which would mean that we hit 15k in about 746 days (~December 2022 or January 2023). However, I think that the question rate is likely to increase.

Checking the list all sites, we can determine a median of graduation at around 10k questions.

@peterh-ReinstateMonica So when will this site get out of beta?

@fasterthanlight If the CMs think it so. Their recent decisions have made the impression in me, that they dislike both the Space SE and the Astronomy SE on unknown reasons. The company... well, I believe, they only don't close/sell the SE network because it would be a PR disaster for them. But they want to be the company behind the StackOverflow, and the average company employee has only superficial ideas what could be this stackexchange thing.

@fasterthanlight For the most part, site graduations have come to a halt network-wide over the past couple of years. I think that's in part due to a lack of resources and personnel on the community management part of things - it's not really an issue specific to Astronomy.

This is a few weeks late, but Astronomy has graduated! Also we just hit 12k questions, 40 percent to 15 thousand questions after just over a year, @Jonas is almost spot on with the prediction there :)


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Why did I see the following pop-up message only now?
For quite a while, I have access to various review queues, but only today I got the following pop-up (actually individually for each queue):

Why is that?
PS: It seems to be astronomy SE specific as far as I can tell, that's why I am asking here.

I think it's a new thing for beta sites, I got that message as well.

I just realized that I got it on the main site as well, just with a bit of time delay

It's also on the meta sites too :)

This is because of a new network-wide initiative to better educate folks about the review queues. It should show up on every site on which you have review privileges, but won't show up if you don't have access to the review queues - that's likely why you didn't see it on the majority of the sites you use.


text:
Science stack exchanges helping other science stack exchanges!
The Physics Meta promotes support for all Science sites on Stack Exchange, in this post. The same meta post is now on several other science SE Meta sites.
The Astronomy SE is one of the sites that has benefited from this (and is currently still benefiting from this, if you look at the "Sites in Beta" section of that Meta post).
Let's give back to the younger science communities, now that we here at Astronomy have graduated out of the Commitment stage, and let's help some of the other sites in Beta, as they are doing for us.
Below is the post from the Physics Meta (now on several others too).

Science proposals need your help! Consider committing to these, to make them successful & scientific:
See also the long list of science and technology proposals on Area 51.

Committers needed

Site definition needed

Sites in beta
Science and technology sites currently in beta include:

This is community wiki -- feel free to add other proposals worth mentioning.


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Are questions about equipment instructions on-topic here?
I have bought an amateur telescope recently.
Can I ask other members detailed questions like "How can I work with my telescope?" or "How do I set my telescope on a specific celestial object to observe?" or "How do I calibrate my telescope?"?

As the current answer states, a big Yes! You can do a quick check first to see if there's an identical question, but don't worry if there is some overlap only, every telescope and every user is different.

Yes! That was actually the main hope for the site when it was launched--that it would be a home for this kind of information. Naturally, there end up being a lot of science questions simply because not everyone has access to a telescope, but equipment setup is still perfectly welcome.

...and because astronomers like to talk about astronomy without all those rocket-based questions in Space SE. :-) I didn't realize that that was the site's original hope. It still is a great place to ask such questions but I'm also glad there's a place to discuss all aspects of astronomy!

@uhoh I should clarify: many of the users who signed onto the proposal on Area 51 were interested in the science aspect, but the CM team's hope was that the site would be a good place for amateur astronomers to learn how to setup and use their equipment.


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Is 500 reputations enough to be able to "cast close & reopen votes"?
I have just asked 4 questions here, and thanks to other members two of them were received very well.
Now I have surpassed 500 reputations and I have received a new privilege "Casting close & reopen votes".
But is 500 reputations enough so that this privilege is granted? I mean I am still new here and I have to be experienced more in asking good questions (one of my questions isn't received very well). In other words, how can a member who isn't experienced enough yet, know and decide which post deserves a close?
In contrast, I have a reputation of 609 in English language learners SE, but I haven't been granted this privilege yet there.
I personally think that the privilege of splitting the score should be prior to casting close votes.

Note: privileges with reputation levels can be found here: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

The threshold for various privileges varies between sites, depending on the phase the site is in. Sites in the beta phase have lower reputation thresholds for various privileges. Astronomy recently left the beta phase, as English Language Learners had already done, but for various reasons, the thresholds have not been raised to the levels they are on sites that had previously left beta, which is why the ability to cast close votes only requires 500 reputation here.
You could argue that this is a bit low; on the other hand, most folks take a while to get to 500. I'd guess that the typical reputation point gain on a new user's post is around 30-40 points. Most people who gain close/reopen privileges have enough time to get acquainted with the site and its scope to properly use them. (Citation: We haven't had any major issues with that over the past 8+ years!)

Excellent answer! I agree completely.


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Let's make an attempt to answer old, unanswered questions
I have been looking at the unanswered questions on this site for some time (for some days tbh) and in my opinion, most of them are very intriguing and interesting and they deserved to get answered. There are interesting comments beneath the questions but there is no answers or even a partial answer. Some users might comment after some months or years to give some new updates like new findings or some new information but nobody are aware of that because OPs are inactive and they do not edit the question and so they doesn't get bumped on the main page. Eventually, the question gets cold and gets accumulated in the unanswered tab.
I do not have sufficient knowledge and lack expertise in this field but I would like some of these interesting question to get answered. I do not have enough reputation to give bounties on these question. Also, these question are already well-formatted so there is no room for editing (and thus do not get bumped on the main page).
Some honorable mentions:

"SE - stop firing the good guys" is doing a commendable job in
answering some old questions in the space exploration site (you can
check his activity).

"uhoh" is a master in commenting and linking questions and
stuffs (he has a habit of linking unanswered question and giving
some attention). He too asks good questions.

"usernumber" also ask some good question, some of his question are
left unanswered.

So, I would like some highly knowledgeable users here to make an effort in answering and giving some light to these questions. Note that I am not forcing anyone. Anyone who has or give a certain interest in some question might give a try, or do some edit or give some bounty and thus attract attention.
I do realize that all questions can't be answered so, I don't expect all of them to get answered but I am sure some of them will get very good answers.

I think you're right. We're going through a big growth spurt right now, and maybe with the new activity we can get some folks to take a fresh look at older questions. Perhaps select a few of your favorites and link them in an answer below. You could make it a community wiki so others can contribute. Everyone can use that as a starting point for taking a look at old stuff.

Just in case other users haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has "unanswered" questions filter if they want to easily browse questions that are considered unanswered by Stack Exchange (no upvoted/accepted answers, contrast to "no answer").

Update VII [28-02-2023] (See previous updates)
It's been a long time since I updated this list. So many good questions were posted last year but hasn't got any answer. Here are 9 posts from last year. Happy answering!
Note: Most of these question has valuable comments beneath it which can be compiled to answers.

Up to what distance from the Moon does the Moon's gravity hold its exosphere before it is being cast away by solar wind?

How to measure the latitude of the moon?

What fraction of meteorites found on Earth are for practical purposes non-magnetic?

Why does the axis tilt (obliquity) of Earth change over time?

Is it possible that the inner Solar System formed in a different configuration to today?

Does polar motion cause the Earth ellipsoid to change?

Will tidal heating on Jovian moons ever cease?

Titan's Atmosphere

Would tidally locked Earth-like exoplanets necessarily have hot pole/cold pole atmospheric circulation?

Bonus:
How far have stars been seen beyond the center of the Milky Way?

I also left a comment at https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/39313/in-terms-of-power-delivered-to-earth-what-is-the-brightest-object-in-the-sky since the question is not fully clear to me.

@ConnorGarcia Aren't you the expert for answering old questions ;-)

I think that Did the Moon have a substantial atmosphere in the past? can be moved now?

@uhoh Yes, definitely. I forgot to update. I am happy that someone is looking at this list. :)

Questions answered till now:

Why was helium hydride (HeH+) the universe's first molecule? (answered by @ProfRob)
What are Kepler's laws (as he wrote them)? (answered by @Connor Garcia)
How does the gravitation of Jupiter or other big planets affect Kepler's third law? (answered by @Connor Garcia)
What is the farthest reported distance from observer from which a solar system body has occulted a star? (answered by me)
Is 486958 Arrokoth (2014 MU69 aka Ultima Thule) the only solar-system object determined to be binary by occultation? (answered by @ConnorGarcia)
Do Enceladus' geysers fall back to its surface or do they achieve escape velocity? (answered by @Connor Garcia)
How fast was the Earth spinning directly after the Moon formed? (answered by @Connor Garcia)
What is happening with these solar particles detected near the Sun that is so newsworthy? (answered by @B--rian)
How active was the Milky Way in its first 5 billion years? (answered by @B--rian)
How does Io's atmosphere behave locally near volcanic plumes? (answered by @B--rian)
Assuming no light pollution, was "2C. 1406" ever visible to the naked eye? (answered by @HDE 226868)
What are the 4 candidates for Planet Nine reported in 2017? (answered by @B--rian)
Did the Moon have a substantial atmosphere in the past? (answered by me)
What is the highest resolution image of the moon taken from Earth's surface? (answered by me)
Could there be liquid water on Uranus? Are there any indications that there might be? (answered by @planetmaker)
What if there was an asteroid belt with the mass of a planet? (answered by @IvanKurta)
What fraction of a star's hydrogen store will be fused over its lifespan? (answered by @ProfRob)
How far away was the binary black hole that produced GW170729? (answered by @B--rian)

Isn't this list already captured by the Revival badge https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/help/badges/64/revival ?  Or are you just featuring questions from your weekly list of five here?

@ConnorGarcia No, these questions were from my list of five. The two questions you answered were previously mentioned and were replaced with new one.

Great, I really appreciate this meta post!  I read it when I first joined and it inspires me to try to answer old questions!


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Graduation of the Astronomy Stack Exchange
The Astronomy Stack Exchange site is scheduled to graduate from Beta to a full site today, December 16th.
The moderator team would like to congratulate our entire user base for the contributions that made this graduation possible. The hard work and diligence in asking and answering questions thoroughly and respectfully has helped get us here. Specifically, graduation criteria has been based on the longevity of our site, the number of open questions, and the number of open questions that have at least one upvoted answer.
Anyone will have the option to self-nominate for new moderator elections, which may take place possibly as far out as 2023. Site customization, such as custom background and badge design isn't immediately planned but may be available in the future.
I love Astronomy SE for the wide variety of question topics and difficulty levels, the interesting and varied answers, and the dedication to hard science.
The corresponding META announcement is here: Congratulations to the 58 sites that just left Beta
Again, Congratulations!!

The badge is gone... very different now.

...I've been waiting for this moment, for all my life...

Yay, happy graduation!

Three thousand days later, it has finally come.
CONGRATULATIONS!

I had been waiting for this moment for a long time! :)
CONGRATULATIONS!

CONGRATS!!! :D Sure took long enough xD
Also it graduated on my birthday that's fun lol.


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What are your plans for the Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14th, 2023?
On October 14, there will be an annular solar eclipse viewable from the Western Hemisphere. In an annular solar eclipse, the moon appears slightly smaller than the sun. At maximum obscuration, we should be able to observe a "fiery doughnut." Observing directly with the naked eye or a telescope will cause eye damage.
I plan to be rafting on the Green River, a touch North of ideal viewing conditions. Instead of observing the eclipse, I plan to observe the effect of the eclipse on the local wildlife. Do you have plans to enjoy/observe the eclipse?
More information from NASA: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses/2023/oct-14-annular/where-when/ . The graphic is from the same page:

Safe viewing recommendations: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses/2023/oct-14-annular/safety/

The International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque will host an eclipse 'balloon glow' event: https://balloonfiesta.com/Post/2023-Albuquerque-International-Balloon-Fiesta-Prime-Location-to-view-Annular-Solar-Eclipse

There's a John Dewey conference at SIUC in Illinois that I already registered to attend that whole weekend. So, looks like I can get a partial view during the morning! Wonder how many presentations that morning will have empty rooms . . .

I saw the total eclipse of 1999.  See it if you can, it's quite a sight.

It will be partial for me. I will use this inexpensive apparatus.
I recommend a hole about the same diameter as the expected Sun image.

Lens diopter
Focal length
Image size

+1.5
67 cm
6.2 mm

+1.25
80 cm
7.4 mm

+1.0
100 cm
9.3 mm


text:
Is it wrong for someone to post an answer that does not meet their own up-vote standard?
A user could have two standards:

A standard by which we think someone else's answer is good enough to up-vote.
A standard by which we think our own answers are good enough to post.

Question: Is it wrong to have a less stringent standard for up-voting than we have for posting answers?
When going over my own answers, I don't think they all would pass my own standard for up-voting.  In some cases, I posted answers which I would consider fairly simple to beginner-level homework problems.  In some cases, much better answers were posted after I'd posted an initial answer.  In some cases, I posted supplemental answers to accompany more comprehensive answers.
Note:  I am absolutely not suggesting we delete any existing answers.  I would be very disappointed if this question resulted in the loss of current answers on Astronomy SE.

tl;dr: Basically don't worry, just go ahead and contribute!

Is it wrong for someone to post an answer that does not meet their own up-vote standard?

Question: Is it wrong to have a less stringent standard for up-voting than we have for posting answers?

Hmm...
Is X wrong...
No. We have best practices and various community votings, and we have a code of conduct and moderation, but "wrong" doesn't seem to be in the Stack Exchange universe, nor does any similar absolutism.
"does not meet own up-vote standard" & "less stringent standard"
Hmm... apart from gamification issues, one reason we can't vote on our own posts is that we simply may not be as objective judging what we just wrote. It's the same reason we folks generally can't proofread their own writing and ask a friend or colleague to do it, and the reason Hollywood makes such heavy use of test screening.
I think the only possible strategy is to do what we do every day, throw ourselves at the mercy of the court.
In fact I think the question is based on a flawed premise that one can apply the same standard to their own posts and to those written by others.
Having written about five thousand SE posts I can say for myself that the ones that are best received are almost never the ones I worked the hardest on in terms of time, effort, thinking, trips to the library, etc.
I never second-guess myself. I just do what I can based on a given day's "procrastination budget" and how deeply I want to overspend from that budget.
"up-vote standard" & "standard for up-voting"
Do most people really have a concrete, objective standard when they vote? For those that feel they do, is it even a good standard? There are punitive1 voters and preemptive2 voters, reflexive3 voters, stingy and generous voters, those that are a little more generous with voting for new users' first questions and those that have no problem piling insta-down votes onto new users' first questions without giving them a chance to learn about how to ask a good question.
I think "voting standards" are an illusion, people vote instinctively and sometimes reflexively. It's like breathing in that (u)nder normal conditions the (voting) depth and rate is automatically, and unconsciously, controlled...
"fairly simple" and "supplemental" answers
Stack Exchange works really well in my opinion. It has built-in search and it shows up in external search engine searches, the community voting system offers readers a quick view of what others found useful in terms of answers and they can quickly scroll through all of them to see what they like the best.  We are pretty good at reminding answer authors to include supporting sources for their facts not because we necessarily don't believe them, but because (in part) it provides even more information to future readers.
Basically don't worry, just go ahead and contribute!
Throw in your two cents and don't worry about anything. The Stack Exchange monster (all of us + the site) will eat everything and decide later what gets digested and what gets spit out.

1What I call punitive voting happens (not so much here) for a variety of reasons. People are... people.
2My definition of preemptive voting applies mostly to new users (either to SE in general, or to a new site different than what they are used to, e.g. going from Cooking SE to Politics SE) who are not yet familiar with how to write well-received posts and all the guidelines. Remember, we don't require folks to read the instructions before posting! In my opinion enlightened folks just leave a noob question alone in terms of up/down voting and instead leave a helpful comment, then come back in 24 or 48 hours (not everyone is a hardcore SE addict) and see if they've made some progress before voting up or down. A quick down vote on such questions followed by ignoring it in my opinion is preemptive in that the post is simply not ready for voting.
3My definition of reflexive voting is broad. I do it; sometimes I will only skim a long answer by a user who I already know writes excellent posts before upvoting. It's bad I know, but I do it. But I am more concerned about reflexive down voting for reasons like "The OP seems to be asking X" where X might be a leading question, homework question without suitable explanation, argumentative question, or other. In my experience in most cases these feelings are due to a combination of post author inexperience with SE or with English or simply a misperception, but sometimes people leave that "You seem to be..." negative comment and a down vote, and the post continues to get down voted and that "seem to be" comment gets up voted, and I am pretty sure some folks see that comment before they really even read the post and just reflexively "pile on" the down voting.

Well said--the same principle that makes us unable to fairly judge our own answers positively, makes us unable to fairly judge them negatively. We might not think an answer we wrote would be worthy of an upvote, but it might be extremely helpful to someone else. As long as we feel we're working within the site guidelines for answer-writing, we should go ahead and post what we can. If it becomes clear the community disagrees that we met those standards, we can edit or remove our answers.

I once posted an answer where I accidentally arrived at the correct answer with errors in my math and I could not figure out how to correct the math so I had to remove my example solution. Two people still found the answer helpful enough to upvote.

When going over my own answers, I don't think they all would pass my own standard for up-voting.

The expression "imposter syndrome" leaps to mind.  Something like that anyway.
Only you know if you feel that kind of insecurity about other types of work you do, but it's might be an idea to consider if you are over-critical of your own work.  Just a suggestion.
I don't think you could have that reputation score without other people considering your answers useful.

Is it wrong to have a less stringent standard for up-voting than we have for posting answers?

An upvote is a statement that you consider an answer (or question) useful to the community or answering the OP's question (which can be different things).
Nothing more or less.  Anything more is overthinking.  There's no written in stone definition for these things.
What standard you hold your own answers to is irrelevant to whether you consider someone else's answer useful in those contexts.

There can be only one person to judge wether you have different standarts for upvoting an answer and writing one yourself. However these scales could be skewed and might be considered differently by different people. Given that self-perception easily differs from the perception others have of a person, having subjectively different standards can be quite acceptable.
Using absolutes for both is also not necessary. One could, for instance, take the quality of question into account for when to answer and upvote (my own willingness to be exhaustive definitely is influenced by my perception of the question).
Taken these two main arguments, it is imho quite desirable to contribute. That may be an initial or partial answer (which can sometimes trigger longer or more exhaustive ones), it can be supplements, and of course the complete answers. Each is helpful, and people will judge and tell by votes wether they agree.


text:
Moderator Pro Tem Announcement

As of 2021, the site is no longer under pro tem moderation. It is now under elected moderation. Donald.McLean stepped down, but called2voyage and HDE 226868 have stayed on as moderators. They were joined by an additional mod as a result of the election here.

Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: Moderators Pro Tempore.
I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that this community’s issues are properly addressed:

We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.
Did I overlook anyone?
Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in no way a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why you'll have your elections several weeks after graduation.
Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone.

Let's also thank these users, who have moderated in the past:

(source: stackexchange.com)

Thanks for accepting me! I look forward to being able to support this community further as a pro tem mod.

congratulations to all the pro tem mods. lets all together make our Astronomy SE a big success. All the best Mods.


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Is tag "trajectory" necessary?
FYI, I created a new tag, trajectory. I thought I should ask it not if I was too lame to ask before creating, so there wouldn't be too late to delete it in case.
Is this tag necessary or is tag orbit enough? (there's not even so clear for me the difference between the two worlds)

This was resolved by getting rid of the trajectory tag, despite the answer below.

It's perfectly reasonable to have both, in my opinion. They aren't really the same thing. Orbit might be considered of course as a type of trajectory (i.e. orbital trajectory), but what's usually implied with the latter is non-orbital trajectories, such as parabolic-, hyperbolic-, ballistic-,... So yeah, I say we keep them both, see if they later need further differentiation.
By the way, that question you tagged with trajectory, I'm not sure it really needs it, since it already uses orbit and you're specifically asking about orbital trajectories.   There might be a point in making orbit a synonym of trajectory tho, but that's probably best asked as a different question, or just asked of community managers moderating the site now through flags on your question. @JonEricson is experienced and knowledgeable enough on the subject to simply do it with respect to what's best for the community, if prompted to it by a flag, I have no doubt. ;)


text:
Reference material
This community wiki is a one-stop shop for astronomy-related textual resources. Feel free to make recommendations of resources that you find particularly useful in the study of astronomy.

Original request by Artemisia:
I am interested in learning about astronomy from a rigorously mathematical perspective (astrophysics textbooks) whilst enjoying the subtleties of observations and pictures like a Dorling Kindersley book. Any recommendations?

Like, basically all full page pictures with mathematically rigorous astrophysics on top of them? That's a tall order.. I can include mathematically rigorous books of all levels, but I'm not aware of anything like that. It'd be a cool idea, though.

Very!. Books are either full of pictures or full of math. I don't mind if it has slightly less rigor and more pictures than a book full of math :)

Would you want a list of mathematically rigorous or nice pictures? Some are super rigorous with maybe 10-20 pages of glossy full page pictures embedded at the very middle of the book.

Haha! Alright :) Let me see the list and try to get hold of those books :)

The following books are ones I've found useful over the years. I should note that many of these books I've used for my classes, and so they contain various levels of mathematics (proofs, etc..). I'll try to give a rating (1=not super rigorous, 2=fairly rigorous, and 3=most rigorous) as to how rigorous they are mathematically speaking.
For Astrophysics:
1) Astrophysics in a Nutshell  -> 2, but not too many pictures
2) An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics -> 2, has some pictures intermingled, but not what you're describing.
For Cosmology:
1) Introduction to Cosmology -> 2, has some good pictures in it, but interspersed.
2) Principles of Physical Cosmology -> 3, not too many.
3) Cosmological Physics -> 3, not too many.
For Observational Astronomy:
1) An Introduction to Astronomical Photometry Using CCDs -> 1 (This is a free pdf, actually), not really great in the way of pictures (they're largely hand drawn or scanned in).
2) Observational Astronomy -> 2, some pictures, but not many are full page, and not in color.
For Galactic Dynamics:
1) Galactic Dynamics -> 2/3, this is the one which has a nice little full page picture section. The only problem is that it's a bit advanced and is really only about galactic astrophysics, not really about much else in astronomy/astrophysics.

Books that have amazing full page photos of astrophysical objects are:
1) Far Out, by Michael Benson
2) Space Places by Roger Ressmeyer
3) Hubble - National Geographic

I apologize that this does not really answer the question. I'm unaware of a book that has both mathematical rigor and full page, high quality images of the things it talks about. I think it would be an amazing idea to come up with one though!

Oh my word haha that's a lot of books. Let me get hold of a few of them. Yes it definitely would be amazing :D It need not be so rigorous and it would certainly be a good textbook for courses as well! Thank you for your help :) Can we pitch this idea to someone who writes such books? Or you yourself?

Personally, I'm not really in a position to write my own textbook (yet). It could certainly be pitched to a publisher. The critical part is to find an author willing to write it. Email some people you think might be interested, or maybe you can be pointed to the right person. Also, though I don't know of any offhand, I'm not certain that something like this hasn't already been done.

I highly doubt it. If there was a book of the sort, I am sure it would be a prescribed text or something rather famous.

I found this video today and I felt like you might like it :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2RgJD6CKt4

This is not meant to be a serious answer, so please don't take it like that, but the original question and some of the comments under it reminded me of Andy Friedman's Physics/Math/Astronomy Cheat Sheets, for example (more in the link):
              "Astronomy 150" Cheat Sheet #1 for Radiative Processes in Astrophysics (© CC w/ Attribution Dr. Andrew C. Friedman)
I can certainly enjoy the subtleties of observations with these cheat sheets, and they make for a nice picture too, don't you think? :D

Hahaha wow! I want to print this and attach it on my door... not like my picture on disturbance of quantum states hasn't kept enough people away ;). It's definitely an awesome picture :)


text:
Do questions about Hubble and Voyager belong here?
Do questions about man-made objects in space (such as Hubble, Voyager, the Apollo shuttles, etc) fit into this site, or is the site more aimed at cosmology and astrophysics? (the current questions seem to lean more towards the latter)
If not, is there a StackExchange site which they fit into better?

Stack Exchange has two separate sites that could cater such questions, Astronomy and Space Exploration. On which of the two they would likely fit better is though down to what they're actually asking, sometimes even a preference of their authors where they would rather see them answered, since these space probes and space observatories that you mention have both technical aspects as well as do science that is largely astronomy related.
Some questions will inevitably ask about both aspects though, afteral their mode of operation and science they are doing are inseparable, with Kepler being an excellent example due to one of its reaction wheels non-operational, technically limiting science it is capable of performing. So this remains a bit of a gray area, but scopes of individual Stack Exchange sites will inevitably at least partially intersect one another. Enforcing too strict borders between sites likely wouldn't be productive; askers would avoid coming close to it in fear of their questions being rejected, which would only lead to a too wide gap in scope in reality, even if they should cover all bases in theory.
So this boils down to what we defined as being on scope for Astronomy.SE, which does cross over to what's on scope on other Stack Exchange sites to some extent, mostly with Physics that does accept astronomy questions too, but all of this is covered in many threads here in Astronomy Meta, e.g. How to draw a line between Astrophysics and Physics, if there is any possibility? or a plethora of other threads discussing scope, so I won't go into it on this occasion.
As far as questions that are borderline on-scope or in theory equally befitting also other Stack Exchange sites' scope, the general consensus is that unless they're strictly off-topic where posted, we shouldn't push for migration. It is fine to ask its author about it, present a possibility of migration in the comments, but unless it is requested by their authors themselves, they should stay where posted.
As a rule of a thumb though, if you're asking about spacecraft operation, technical aspects of them, and similar, then that belongs on Space Exploration, and if you're asking about science of space probes and space observatories that is astronomy related, then Astronomy would be the place to ask about it, with planetary-science being one example that is catered for on both sites equally. And if you're crossing both aspects in your question, then it is up to you where you deem you'll get better answers. But please don't cross-post your question on multiple Stack Exchange sites.

For the particular question I had in mind, Space Exploration fit the bill perfectly; thanks!

@IQAndreas No problem, and sorry for taking the long way around to answering your question when a simple comment could do, I just wanted the whole thread to be more widely applicable, some others might find it useful too. ;)

@TidalWave Don't apologize, the extended answer was great. I made the question broader for the same reason; I could have asked "This is my exact question. Where should I put it?"

I'm new to Astro.SE, but I think Hubble in particular fits in the scope of the site. All Hubble does is make astronomical observations, 24/7. Without the data from Hubble and other observation satellites in orbit many questions here wouldn't even have an answer. All Hubble data is about astronomy. So Hubble is definitely in.
Voyager's mission was more limited, but if we accept questions about the solar system, we have to accept Voyager as well.
Apollo OTOH doesn't belong here in my opinion. The Apollo project focussed solely on the moon, and it was primarily a geopolitical project, rather than astronomical. (Though the "geo" is a misnomer of course.)


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Astronomy doesn't show at the top of `Explore our sites`
When logged in into stackoverflow and clicking StackExchange button on the bar( top left ), the sites where I'm a member of show before the search bar and every other site which are listed alphabetical.
This works for other sites, but not for Astronomy even though I'm a member of it. I first I though the site must not be in beta but space exploration is in beta but still shows at the top.

I assume since you deleted this that you figured it out, but just in case you didn't: the sites listed at the top are the five sites you have the most rep in--not all sites you're a member of.

@called2voyage I have 6 sites listed. But there is an answer at meta stackoverflow now http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216971/multicollider-site-switcher-not-showing-all-sites-that-i-have-accounts-on. And if I open the menu from here I get 8 sites listed.

Yes, any site you open also shows at the top. I don't know why you have six listed by default. Perhaps if you have two sites which tie for fifth place in rep they both show up? If you show me a screenshot I might be able to explain better.

It would also help if you sent a screenshot of your Stack Exchange accounts page.

I doubt it is worth the effort. Admins probably don't care about such details.

They actually do. If there is indeed an error or bug, it would be worth pointing out. I cannot help assess whether there is or not without screenshots though.

The site switcher currently shows the current site in the first position and your top few sites (by your reputation) "above the fold".  The rest of the sites are located under the "Find a Stack Exchange site" search bar.  So even though I have an account on every single site my site switcher looks like this:

It more or less matches what I see in my flair:

There is a planned change to allow everyone to customize the site switcher, which I'm looking forward to.  I kinda don't do much gardening anymore, so that site is one I will probably drop.  A few new sites (like Astronomy) are interesting right now, so I'd like to "promote" them.
UPDATE: This change has now been completed.


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Introduction to astronomy
I'm really interested in astronomy since I began watching the night sky with my binoculars and found the view above me so beautiful. For some reason, I didn't notice that we had such a thing above us, being part of our daily life and considering it as something that has to be without questioning myself, too immersed with human things (school, etc.). Anyway, I wanted to know what would be a good way to begin learning about astronomy ? What would be some good books that I could learn from ? (I don't have the educational background as professional astronomers do, for now.)
Thank you for your suggestions!

You could find your local astronomy club and see if they have "Star Parties" where members bring their telescopes to some dark field once a month or so and show off the universe to anyone who shows up. Everything you see will be something real and meaningful to you in a different way.
Be warned, though, that you might get hooked, and end up owning a couple of thousand dollars worth of really cool equipment.


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When should [early-universe] end?
Do we want it to be equal to the definition at Wikipedia, i.e. ending with cmb?
Currently we have questions like these:

Will James Webb see Population III stars?
Characteristics of the first planets in the Universe?

Which cover a period much later than CMB.
The early-universe wiki excerpt currently says

Questions regarding the universe shortly after it's formation

This UC Berkeley page seems to peg the CMB as the end of the early universe period. We should give a little bit for some of our astrophysics professionals around here to weigh in, but otherwise I think that's what we should go with.

Several sites (The First Stars and Galaxies, for example) place the formation of the first stars as happening in the early universe period. This happened well after the CMB. NASA pegs the early universe as ending even later with the formation of the first galaxies. This is in line with the two questions raised in this meta question.


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2021 Community Moderator Election Results
Astronomy's first election has come to a close. We are delighted to appoint your new moderator:

He'll be joining the existing crew.  Please thank him for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with them as he learn the ropes!
You can view the election history here.

Congrats Connor, and my appreciation to all our moderators for the work you put in, most of it unseen by us. I do very much look forward to the day when we can welcome an additional moderator from some other part of Planet Earth: currently all three Earth-bound mods are from the USA, the other one hailing from "A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse". ;-)

@Chappo You should probably consider putting that into an answer :)

@Chappo Also, maybe if humans colonize Mars or some other planet in the near future, maybe from there... ;)

@ChappoHasn'tForgottenMonica I'm also in the US - I use a very liberal definition of "vicinity". . .

@HDE226868 Is a star 600 ly from us still within our "neighbourhood", or would astronomers regard this as "out of town"?

@called2voyage This has been featured for about a month. When would it be a good time to remove it from the featured on Meta? Or maybe we still need to congratulate our new moderator more (I think so!)?

@fasterthanlight Featured tags automatically go away after awhile, so unless something comes up that we need that featured slot for, I'll probably just let it age out.

Congratulations, Connor Garcia!!!
I want to give a huge shoutout to @ConnorGarcia for having courage to self-nominate and take on a task that requires much time and effort.

Well done @ConnorGarcia . Without voluntary moderators there would be no Astronomy Stack exchange.


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Announcing a Pro Tempore election
Summary: Astronomy Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for a special election on March 29 to bring in one more moderator.
For full details of the process, see the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange.
The timeline is as follows:

Starting on March 29, users can nominate themselves. Users can also ask questions on meta for potential moderators to answer. (Use the discussion and election tags.)

On April 5, if there are two or more candidates, we'll run an election.  If not, I'll simply appoint the candidates. (There's a small chance we'll need to remove a nomination, but I doubt that will come up.)

If there is an election, I'll announce the results on meta on April 12.

(Note for current moderators: there's no need to nominate yourself even though you'll likely get an email saying you should. The system assumes the first election is a graduation election, which would mean moderators would need to be re-elected. This isn't that sort of election.)
If you have any questions about the process, please stick them in an answer here.

Is there a list of expectations for moderators somewhere?  Like how often they are expected to log on to clear queues, etc?

@ConnorGarcia The general expectations are described here: https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/05/18/a-theory-of-moderation/

@ConnorGarcia This is a great question though, because Astronomy has unique needs. Astronomy users tend to generate a lot more flags than similar sites (such as Space Exploration), so it would be most helpful to have someone who could be on regularly to help with the flag burn-down.

@ConnorGarcia Congrats on joining the mod team! I look forward to working with you.

@called2voyage Thanks very much.  I look forward to working with you as well.  Looks like I have some homework to do on learning policy and procedure tonight!


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Do we need a tag [agn] or is [active-galaxy] enough?
I was a bit suprised that agn did not exist, and neither does active-galactic-nucleus, and I just created it because a search showed 72 results (as of 2021-04-15). On second thought, it is probably a good idea to ask here, what the community thinks about these tags, and in particular how big the overlap to active-galaxy is, before I start adding agn-tags to older questions.
IMHO active-galaxy contains a agn, but a question about a agn is not necessarily about a complete active-galaxy.
Now, that we are at it, should we also create active-galactic-nucleus and make it a synonym of agn?

It would be better if we make them synonyms. There is no need to having a tag that is pretty much the same as another.

[tag:active-galaxy] only has 21 questions. If all the AGN questions had that tag it would actually be on its way to having enough usage to be community moderated. I don't see a good reason to fragment it.

@called2voyage So please consider my question a synonym-request then :-)

@B--rian Ok, done! Merged and synonymized [tag:agn] --> [tag:active-galaxy] and created the synonym [tag:active-galactic-nucleus] --> [tag:active-galaxy].


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Tag synonym suggestion for planetary-science
I do not quite understand why we need the tag planetary-science since we have planet as widely used tag. To be quantitative: It is 37 agains 607 (as of February 11, 2021).
If we could all agree on that tags being synonomously used, could somebody with the appropriate rights define the synonym, please?

Hmm, planetary-science covers a topic space that is not applicable to all planet questions, so I don't think a synonym is appropriate. planetary-science was originally conceived to capture questions about atmospheric or geological properties of planets, rather than purely astronomical observations. I see that the term "planetary science" may have broadened since we created the tag--or perhaps we were unaware of the broader use when we conceived it.
In any case, I could see justification for renaming it to better capture the subject area, but I don't think it would be helpful to just blob all of the subject matter together into the massive planet tag. Tags are supposed to help us find information about certain subjects easier, and the topic of planet in general is so broad it is not very helpful in categorizing alone.


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Tags "planetary-atmosphere" vs. "atmosphere"?
While looking for tags without any definition (in order to suggest one), I came across the tag planetary-atmosphere vs. atmosphere with 17 vs. 173 hits (as of February 11, 2021). My understanding is, that it is good practicse to minimize the number of tags, if somehow possible. What do you think about setting all planetary-atmosphere to the more general tag atmosphere?
For quite a few of the 173 hits, we actually have two tags atmosphere and the name of a planet (which would imply planetary-atmosphere). No information would be lost, if we would make sure that the 17 questions currently tagged planetary-atmosphere are changed to being atmosphere-tagged plus having  additionally either a planet name tag, or exoplanet or planets.

Update: There's a catch to being able to do this right away. See discussion in the comments.

These definitely should be merged. The only reason I could see for having a distinction would be for distinguishing between [Earth] atmospheric effects on observation and the study of atmospheres on other planets. That said, atmosphere is currently being used for other planets, so there really is no distinction. If there's no opposition, I'll go ahead and merge these.

+1 I'd say go for it. I use atmospheric-effects when I ask about astronomical aspects of Earth's atmosphere, so for questions about atmospheres other than those about looking through them with telescopes, this sounds fine. Do you have an option to choose planetary-atmosphere as the "main" name of the tag, or will it automatically be atmosphere because it's been used much more ofthen?

@uhoh I'll make planetary-atmosphere the main one.

okay that's great!

@uhoh Actually, on second thought, I may not be able to do that. The [tag:atmosphere] tag includes brown dwarf and stellar atmsophere questions.

hmm... I wonder if it's too many to convert to stellar-atmospheres? Maybe over a few days they could be edited?

@uhoh I can't tell exactly how many there are. It seems probably between 20-50.

@uhoh It looks like there are also some that need to be retagged [tag:atmospheric-effects].

I see. It's lunar new year here and everything shuts down for a week. I'm happy to go through them and do that (convert where appropriate) over a period of a few days if it seems like a good idea.

@uhoh If you want to take on that effort, just let me know when you're done and then I'll do the merge.

@uhoh So to be clear, you just need to retag stellar atmosphere and atmospheric effects questions, and then you can leave the rest for me to merge.

Sorry, is this a different way to say the same thing: For all questions with the atmosphere tag that are not about planetary atmospheres remove the atmosphere tag. Then if they need stellar atmosphere or atmospheric effects tags, add them.

@uhoh Yes, that's what I mean. :) Thanks for clarifying!

I basically have to script myself to get anything done these days :-)

@uhoh No worries if you haven't, but have you had a chance to look at these yet?

yikes no, will do today and update you. I (obviously) have time just not the necessary management skills to go with it. Thanks!

I've added an answer w/summary for today

I'm done! 1) atmosphere can be merged into planetary-atmosphere, 2) none of the questions in either one are now related to stellar atmospheres except the ones also containing that tag (for some reason a few need both), and 3) I'll write a tag wiki excerpt for atmospheric-effects that reflects all the questions that are in it now.

@uhoh Ok, merge and synonym complete. Make sure to put a "see also" in the excerpt for planetary atmosphere that refers to stellar-atmosphere and atmospheric-effects.

Great! I've just added two new short excerpts: 1, 2

My understanding is that atmosphere and planetary-atmosphere tags will be merged and called planetary-atmosphere, so I will treat them as one in my summary below.
I've set about the following scripted task:

For all questions with the atmosphere or planetary-atmosphere tags that are not about planetary atmospheres remove those tags.

Then if they need stellar atmosphere or atmospheric effects tags, add them.

Ping moderators when complete so that the merge can execute.

To that end I've processed the 50 most recent ALL THE questions tagged with either (or both).
Here are all my final results after the second wave:
changed to atmospheric-effects

Understanding energy loss in a telescope aperture due to atmospheric dispersion
Source of red in earth's photographs
Why is blue light extincted more strongly than red?
What is the horizontal distance needed to observe an object just as badly as if it where in space at the zenith?
Why is it that night has a almost a bluish tint to it instead of red?  (paused here)
Public Data Set on Atmospheric Absorbtion / Extinction
How much clearer are stars in earths orbit?
Could spy satellites use laser guide stars (for adaptive optics)?
Looking at ourselves with a powerful telescope?
Why is moon light not the same color as sunlight?
What is tilt anisoplanatism for Laser-guide-star usage in adaptive optic systems?
Do the gases in the Earth's atmosphere affect the color of a lunar eclipse?
Does the summit of a small mountain offer better seeing?
Can you see city lights on the Moon from Earth?
Why can't moon light (reflected sun light) turn the sky blue?
Oldest Reference to Astronomical Seeing
Why doesn't the Moonrise appear red when viewed from orbit?
Around what apparent magnitude can the naked eye observe an object during full moon
How many stars can be seen naked eye from outside the atmosphere? How dense is the "sky" from there?
Effect of the absence of atmospheric refraction to sun rise and sunset times
Does the earth's atmosphere act as a spherical lens and refract light from space?
How could a hobbyist astronomer determine apparent magnitude of a star?

changed to stellar-atmosphere

Would the electron cyclotron-maser emission mechanism affect Proxima b's ability to retain an atmosphere?
Is there any synthetic spectrum software for neutron star?
Is the atmosphere of neutron star solid, liquid or gaseous state?
A neutron star without a flat surface and an atmosphere?
Why does the adiabatic exponent decrease at the ionization zones?
Does the Sun have any atmosphere?

removed atmosphere only

If the Earth circled a red dwarf/giant or a brown dwarf, would its sky still look blue?
Ladakh India where the moon (Ramadan moon) is sighted but not in rest of India
How can neutron stars have gaseous atmospheres?

now have BOTH atmosphere & stellar-atmosphere

Do brown dwarfs have stripes?

now have BOTH atmosphere & atmospheric-effects

When and where are we exposed to most cosmic radiation?
Is it possible to see Saturn from Titan's surface, day and night?
Scattered Intensity of Light vs Angles of Incidence and Emission
Are the darker blue/black areas in this picture what the atmosphere of Jupiter looks like without clouds?
What are reliable resources for weather and all other atmospheric obstructions?
Is Earth unique in its fairly clear atmosphere?
How accurate are rederings of something entering Earth's atmosphere?
Energetics of Titans Tholin haze
Can we hear something on Venus, Mars and Titan?

added planetary-atmosphere only

Refraction by Saturn's atmosphere - how dense is it here?


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High-energy-astrophysics vs. particles and other tags in the same field
This a follow-up discussion to high-energy-astrophysics tag usage guideline, could this be improved?
There are currently (February 17th, 2021) only 9 questions tagged particles, compared 22 questions tagged high-energy-astrophysics, 26 neutrinos, and 33 nucleosynthesis.

Many physicists I know use "high-energy-physics" and "(elementary) particle physics" synonymously, so should we introduce a synonym?
In my mind neutrinos implies particles and high-energy-physics, but not the other way round. Is that a potential problem that users might get confused which tag to use, if there are tags of different abstraction-levels (parent-tag "particles", child-tag "neutrino")?

I'm going to leave #1 to others to discuss, but thought it was worth mentioning in regards to #2 that having different levels of abstraction is a good thing. If people get confused, we can just fix the tags on their question for them. Often it's helpful to put both the higher-level and lower-level tag on a question if there's room for it. If you run out of room, stick with just the most specific ones to the question.


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Towards defining the tags "electromagnetic-spectrum" and "wavelength"
I have yet another question about tags, this time it is about electromagnetic-spectrum (with 7 questions as of February 18th, 2021) and wavelength (with 23 questions). The tags are different on different level of granularity, i.e. wavelength would most probably imply electromagnetic-spectrum. I write "most probably", because accoustic phenomena have a wave-length as well, but only 6 questions use both wavelength and the search term sound. So what shall we do now?

I suggest to introduce a new tag sound in any case and add this tag to the above mentioned 6 questions.

Questions about accoustic phenomena, e.g. the loudness of an object, or how sound travels in a given object.

We could then define wavelength e.g. as

Questions about periodic disturbances traveling through space and matter. Use sound or electromagnetic-spectrum to narrow down.

For electromagnetic-spectrum we could write

Questions about a certain range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, given e.g. as wavelenghts or wavenumbers. Consider using wavelength as well.

Please let me know what you think.

The adage If it ain't broke, don't fix it applies here.

Sound
Delete it
We have never had and do not need a sound tag. The tag was created yesterday by adding it to two old questions

Convert pulsar data to sound (2020)
How loud would the Sun be? (2015)

The questions are five years apart and have nothing in common really. I've removed the sound tag from "How loud would the Sun be?" and added the existing asteroseismology tag which is the correct term for acoustic vibrations associated with star-like objects.
We don't want to encourage questions like "How loud would a supernova be if we could hear it?" or "How loud would the Big Bang have sounded?".
I propose the tag be removed from the one remaining question since data-analysis is sufficient. People can still use good old search at the top of the page or in a search engine to find questions about sound, but we don't need a specific tag.
Wavelength
Leave excerpt blank.
There is no need for usage guidance for this tag. There's no rule that says every tag must have an excerpt, and trying to write one for such a well-established term that means the same thing in all fields of science makes no sense.
Electromagnetic-spectrum
Leave excerpt blank.
Ditto. The tag has had no usage guidance until yesterday. There are a few of its 22 linked questions that probably don't need it but that can be fixed by editing.
There is no need to tell people how to use the electromagnetic-spectrum tag. Trying to come up with an excerpt that covers all possible uses is challenging and may be impossible, and people who choose it already know how to use it.


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What's the point of the tag "laws-of-physics"?
As mentioned previously, whenever I have time, I am trying to add descriptions to tags which are yet undefined. I came across the laws-of-physics tag which is refering to only 37 questions (as of February 12, 2021), and is missing a definition. My favorite definition would be that it refers to first principles but that's not quite how the tag is currently used. In my mind, there are some alternatives:

Define it as synonym to modeling which is also only is used sparsely (28 times as of February 12, 2021).
Introduce a tag first-principles, delete the tag laws-of-physics and retag questions appropriately.
Just retag questions, and delete laws-of-physics.

I have a tendency for the last option, but what do you think?

All right, it looks like all of the questions are gone from this tag. Now we just have to make sure no one recreates this tag. If you see it pop up on a question, just retag it for them with a more specific tag and leave a comment for them explaining why.

Yeah, this seems like a junk tag. My inclination would be to retag the questions with more specific tags. When there are no laws-of-physics questions left, the tag will be automatically deleted.


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Is the tag "measurement" a synonym of "observational-astronomy"?
I came across the rather rare (8 occurrences as of February 12, 2021) and yet undefined tag measurement which seems to be a synonym for the ubiquitous (728 times used) tag observational-astronomy.
Do you agree? If so, could somebody please define the synonym?

These seem to be the questions tagged measurement that are about some kind of measuring. I think that for all except "measure the age of the universe" the observational-astronomy tag would be fine.
I've no objection to the proposed synonymization.

How do we measure the age of the universe?
How do we measure the brightness of the stars?
What instruments are used to measure the distance to the Sun?
When was the diameter of Titan first measured?
Determining wind speed distribution on Mars using dune shapes?
How was the axial tilt of planets measured?

Merge and synonym complete.

@called2voyage It took me quite a while to realize that you have the essential diamond behind your username, thanks for your effort!


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What distinguishes the "nomenclature" from "definition"?
Can nomenclature and definition be regareded as synonyms?
Right now (February 16th, 2021), there are only 2 records tagged as nomenclature, and only 4 with tag definition. This is not many, I agree, but browsing some questions made me believe, that at least the tag definition might be useful (and I would volunteer to add that tag to more questions).
I also like the word "nomenclature" and I would like to keep it as a tag, but that's just my subjective view, so that's why I am asking.

These tags are complementary. I didn't realize their usage was so low! nomenclature is for questions seeking for the correct terminology for a concept or for questions regarding the origin or usage of terminology. definition is for questions seeking the meaning of a term or principle.
In the case of a question seeking the meaning of a term, you could argue nomenclature and definition could both be applied, because the origin and usage of the term and its definition are relevant.
A question like "When did 'dwarf planet' first come into use?" on the other hand would be nomenclature but not definition.
A question like "What is the definition of Newton's law of gravitation?" might use definition but not nomenclature, since it's not really interested in terminology but in the definition of a principle.