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Philip Stahl

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I have forty years of experience in Astronomy, specifically solar and space physics. My specialties include the physics of solar flares, sunspots, including their effects on Earth and statistics as applied to astronomical investigations.

Experience in the area

Astronomy: more than forty years experience starting with construction of my own simple telescopes. Worked at university observatory in college, doing astrographic measurements. M.Phil. degree in Physics/Solar Physics and more than ten years as researcher.

What do you like about this subject?

The extent and breadth in the cosmic perspective, and basically 'putting humans in their proper place', disabusing them of an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

What do you still hope to achieve/learn in this field?

To achieve: a computer program that can profile different double layer conditions for solar flares. To learn: anything that I haven't already.

Something interesting about this subject that others may not know:

The discovery of Pluto was a pure fluke based on in error in (Percival) Lowell's calculations. (The mass of Pluto was taken to be 6.6 x the Earth's!)It just turned out that Pluto was where Lowell predicted it was- but his calculations were totally wrong! The right result, for the wrong reason.

Something controversial or provocative about this subject

Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for daring to speculate that life could exist on other worlds, and writing about it.

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  • Response Time(hr) 11.3
  • Response Time(hr, last 90 days) 9.0
  • Number of Questions Today 0
  • Max Questions to be Asked in a Day 15
  • Total Questions (since joining AllExperts) 1306
  • Volunteer Since 2000-10-22
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Recent Answers from Philip Stahl

2012-01-01 Cosmic rays and climate change:

Hello,    I believe you are referring to the 'CLOUD' experiments conducted by a team at CERN headed by Jasper Kirkby, in which they purportedly "re-created the atmosphere" in their lab, and injected into

2011-12-30 celestial coordinates:

Hello,    The most straightforward way to make conversions between any two coordinate systems is to use a software program (the only other alternatives either using special clock drives that do it automatically

2011-12-16 Earth's North Pole in Relation To Milky Way Center:

Hello,    From Norton's Star Atlas, there is a "Galactic Chart" which shows the celestial coordinates of the northern sector of the sky with the Milky Way's galactic coordinates superposed upon them. From

2011-12-12 science fair project:

Hello,    You do not give your specific location (longitude, latitude) but I used the latitude for Salt Lake City (40.75 N) to obtain a year's series of solar transit angles - which image is appended.

2011-12-08 earth and planitary science:

Hello,    Interestingly, I was certain I'd answered this question already several years ago, but on going through the answer archives there's no sign of it! Anyway, I have appended a diagram which pretty

 

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