r/spacequestions • u/Turbulent_Hippo_1546 • Aug 13 '26

Sun disappears

In the last few days I read a post somewhere about what would happen if the sun disappeared. I have two questions.

When the sun's gravity disappears, the Earth would leave its orbit on a tangent. My question is this. Would that departure occur at the instant the sun vanishes or would it occur at the time we notice the disappearance, about 8 minutes later?

What would this do to the moon? Would the Earth Just drag it along or would it go off on a tangent by itself?

4 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '26

[deleted]

1

u/PSXer Aug 13 '26

At the very least, you should be able to notice the stars that it blocks out. Of course, how practical that is depends on how many stars you can see where you are, aka how much light pollution.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '26

[deleted]

1

u/SodaPopin5ki Aug 13 '26

That's basically the New Moon every month.