Because the solar medium will be so tenuous that it will have no appreciable drag on the planet?

(edit) The obvious answer is that the earth will have moved to a more distant orbit, but I've never seen anything suggesting that would happen.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

I was thinking of that, too.

I'll try offering an alternative: It could be because the Sun will have lost so much mass through stellar winds that Earth will have climbed to a higher orbit outside the stellar atmosphere.

Still, a 4000 K, orange-red (Is that the bonus answer, George? ) heater that occupies even half the sky will make for some very uncomfortable weather.

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

Yes, but by that time I don't think there would have been much weather for the last few billion years.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

One should always go with their first guess, except when the second is actually better, as in this case.

Hmmmm....did I hear a whistle. Call in the refs! Arneb is correct but so is Mike. Did the edit make it before Arneb or not?

David Whitehouse's book, The Sun, claims a new model that has the sun puffing-off significant mass causing the planets to move into larger orbits before the sun swells. NGC7027, I think, has puffed and is believed to be a possible example of just what the sun will do in about 7.5 billion years.

The bonus question is surprisingly tricky because I really failed to establish a proper time frame. The following colors should be a chronological "color scheme", maybe....
as it gets hotter during contraction....
blue-white
white
orange-red
red
orange-red
white
bluish-white
then, for a very long time, it will be a white dwarf that is white - assuming 200,000K is reasonably flat in the visible portion - until it cools down to become a white dwarf that is blue, I think. Eventually it will be a white dwarf that is white again.
I would assume it would cool down to orange-red, then red to black. Thus it would become a "dark star" and justifying Wheeler's idea to not use that term to appease the French which did not like the use of "black hole".

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

I think Arneb gets it because while I was just doing a logical triviality he suggested a mechanism. Much better, I think.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Fair enough, and he did get some bonus credit for adding a little color to the thread.

Have at it Arneb.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Thanks a lot, mike (By the way, I just love your signature !). And you are right about the weather, too .

I'll try cooking up a real evil one, but it will take a moment.

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

Correct!

Meanwhile:

The Once and Future Sun

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- Learn a lot teaching others.

Thanks, Eroica. I believe it buys the Earth 100 million more years.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Here goes - I think this will be rather quick and easy.

An astronomer was equipped with a top-notch, state-of-the-art observatory which he christened star-castle in his own language.
Who was it?
Where was it?
What was it designed for?
What kinds of telescopes did it employ (name all)?

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

Think again!

I'll guess Hevelius in Danzig ... no idea what it was designed for or what sorts of telescopes it had. Sternberg doesn't really ring any bells, though.

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In 1584, Tycho Brahe expanded Uranienborg(started 1576-) with another observatory called Stjerneborg(star castle in Danish), both on the small island Hven which he had been given administration of.

The observations he did was on the position of stars (and planets), to a previously unseen precision.
For this he amongst other instruments had built a very large fixed quadrant with a precision in altitude easily down to 5 arcseconds.
Azimuth was measured by taking the time of transit over the meridian, and for this purpose, he had four independent clocks of differing construction so he could compensate for irregularities by comparing them.

As for telescopes, that was misdirection, they hadn't been invented yet, so none.

Links are to an english translation of his ASTRONOMIÆ INSTAURATÆ MECHANICA, which is fascinating reading in it's own right.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Why am I not surprised that Henrik, of all people, should solve this one

It seems the telescope part really threw people off course, mwhahahaha.

Your go, Henrik!

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

Damn your black heart, Arneb!

(I actually considered Tycho for a second, but rejected him because I knew his observatory was called Uranienborg. I forgot all about his being a naked-eye astronomer! )

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- Learn a lot teaching others.

My physics teacher told me that he was granted 5% of the danish BNP by the time, and since would need a lot of paper he built his own paper factory. Don't ask me the name of the generous king, i am not that much into the danish line of monarchs. He was one of the last naked-eye astronomers, then we have Kepler who i think didn't use telescopes neither, but he lived around the same time as Galileo who is known to be the first astronomer using telescopes. You probably know most of this already, but i just wanted in on this thread

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The King was Frederik the 2nd and it wasn't really 5% of the GNP or Denmark, it was 5% of the King's finances. Still it's probably the largest grant relative to a country's finances ever given to a single scientist.
Kepler was a student/collaborator of Tycho after the latter moved to Prag around 1600, where he used Tycho's measurements to develop his laws of motion.
I haven't seen references to Kepler doing much observation of his own.

Which solar phenomenon was the sister of a famous musician involved in the early studies of?

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

GNP, not BNP, i knew that And 5% of the king's finances does sound a bit more realistic. Neither have i heard that Kepler did any observations - i have always been told he used Tycho's observations only to make his laws. OK, back to the marathon quiz

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Have your computer do CHARITY in fields such as medication, physics, chemistry and more without moving a finger.
Visit http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ for more info. Thank you in advance!!!
Please PM me if this signature convinced you to join the great BOINC community.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Well, I did say I wanted to cook up something really evil, didn't I

Now I couldn't ever have gotten away with heaven-castle. That would have melted like chocolate in the Sun before your careful eyes narrowly watching...

Oomph!

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

I might add that I put a twist in as well, just to get even from Tycho's telescopes.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.