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A major flaw in Copernicus's model was that it still had...
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An accurate sketch of Mars's orbit around the Sun would show....
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Astronomy Multiple
Multiple choice questions for Astronomy
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| A major flaw in Copernicus's model was that it still had... | Circular orbits |
| An accurate sketch of Mars's orbit around the Sun would show.... | A nearly perfect circle |
| If Earth's orbit around the Sun were twice as large as it is now, the orbit would take... | More than two times longer |
| An accurate sketch of Jupiter's orbit around the Sun would show... | A nearly perfect circle |
| A planet whose distance from the Sun is 3 AU would have an orbital period of how many Earth-years? | Sq. Rt. of 27 |
| How much stronger is the gravitational pull of the Sun on Earth, at 1 AU, than it is on Saturn and 10 AU? | 100x |
| You note that a particular star is directly overhead. It will be directly overhead again in... | 23 hours 56 minutes |
| While watching a star, you see it moves 15 degrees across the sky. How long have you been watching it? | 1 hour |
| Astronomers analyze starlight to determine a star's | Temperature, composition, and motion. |
| Which of these is not a form of electromagnetic radiation? | DC current from your car battery |
| In the Kelvin scale, absolute zero lies at... | zero K |
| What is true of a blackbody? | Its energy peaks at the wavelength determined by its temperature. |
| The most important advantage of CCDs over film is that.... | they record much more light in a given exposure time |
| What problem do refractor telescopes have that reflectors don't? | chromatic aberration |
| The primary purpose of a telescope is to... | collect a large amount of light and bring it into focus |
| A major advantage of a Newtonian reflector over a refractor is... | the elimination of chromatic aberration |
| The primary reason professional observatories are built on the highest mountaintops is to... | reduce atmospheric blurring |
| One advantage of the Hubble Space telescope over ground based ones is that.... | in orbit, it can operate close to its diffraction limit at visible wavelengths |
| The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) is station far from Earth because... | Earth is a heat source and the telescope must be kept very cool. |
| The best way to study young stars hidden behind interstellar dust clouds would be to use... | infrared light |
| What is the resolution of a telescope? | its ability to distinguish two adjacent objects close together in the sky |
| What problem does adaptive optics correct? | turbulence in the earth's atmosphere which creates twinkling |
| Which of the following are the Jovian planets? | Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune only |
| Which planet by itself contains the majority of mass of all the planets? | Jupiter |
| The Kuiper Belt is found where in the solar system? | beyond the orbit of Nuptune |
| The Oort Cloud is believed to be | a spherical could of cometary nuclei far beyond the Kuiper Belt |
| Long-period comets are believed to originally come from... | the Oort cloud |
| As a rotating gas cloud contracts, it spins... | faster due to conservation of angular momentum |
| Iron meteorites are believed to come from... | the core of a differentiated asteroid, now broken up |
| Which of these bodies are most likely to break up over time? | comet nuclei |
| The Manicouagan reservoir near Quebec is an example of... | a large meteorite impact |
| If you were making a scale model of Earth representing our planet by a 12-inch basketball, the inner core would be about the size of... | 2-inch golf ball |
| The deepest that geologists have drilled into Earth is about the same as... | the altitude most commercial jet airplanes fly |
| If Earth had no Moon, the tides would | Occur with the same frequency, but would not be as strong |
| Which of the following layers of the earth is unique among the terrestrial planets? | hydrosphere |
| At what phase would you expect to find extremely high and low tides? | both new and full moons |
| The Moon's near side always faces Earth due to... | Earth's tidal force |
| Almost all of our atmospheric gases lie in the: | troposphere |
| Without the greenhouse effect operating in our atmosphere... | Earth would have an average temperature of -23 degrees Celcius |
| The major presence of water detected on the Moon is in... | the floors of deep craters in the polar regions, as ice deposits that never thaw |
| The atmospheric gases primarily responsible for our greenhouse effect are... | water vapor and carbon monoxide |
| Seismic waves are most useful for mapping... | the Earth's core and mantle |
| Earth's magnetic field | prevents charged particles in the solar wind from reaching the surface |
| When strong solar winds are displaces poleward by our magnetic fields, we get... | intense auroral displays |
| The region in which charged particle are trapped by our magnetic fields is the... | Van Allen radiation belt. |
| Venus's surface is permanently obscured by clouds. As a result, the surface has been studied primarily by... | orbiting satellites using radar |
| The most likely theory of the formation of Earth's Moon is that it... | formed from a collision of Earth with a Mars-sized object |
| Which of these gets so bright as to be seen at daylight in times? | Venus |
| How does Mercury's rotation relate to the Sun? | Its rotation rate is 2/3 as long as its year, due to tidal resonances. |
| What is the main constituent of the atmosphere of Venus? | carbon dioxide |
| Why are Mars' seasons more extreme than those of the earth? | Dried up seas, weather is driven by evaporation from the polar ice in summer, its orbit is more eccentric than Earth's, its tilt is slightly more than ours. |
| Our most detailed maps of Venus come from... | the Magellan spaceprobe |
| The NASA missions that landed on Mars in 1976 were the... | Vikings I and II |
| The presence of a Mercurian magnetic field surprised the planetary scientists on the Mariner 10 team because.... | the dynamo theory predicted that Mercury was spinning to slowly for one. |
| Saturn's cloud layers are much thicker that those of Jupiter because Saturn has... | weaker surface gravity |
| Compared with Uranus, the planet Neptune is | roughly the same size |
| The spacecraft Cassini went into orbit around... | Saturn |
| Our most detailed knowledge of Uranus and Neptune comes from... | spacecraft exploration |
| Which three played a role in the finding of Neptune? | Adams, Leverrier, and Galle |
| Adams and Levierrier predicted the position of Neptune, based on its perturbations of.... | Uranus |
| If you could find a bathtub big enough for Saturn, the planet would... | float |
| In terms of axial tilt, which of the Jovians shows the largest inclination? | Uranus |
| What would Jupiter have needed to be a star? | enough more mass to make the planet hotter |
| The only probe into the atmospheres of any jovian planet was launched by... | Galileo into Jupiter's equatorial zone |
| What is the source of Jupiter's intense radio waves and magnetism? | liquid metallic hydrogen swirling in the rapidly spinning mantle |
| What is thought to lie at the center of Jupiter? | A massive core of rocky materials with some iron mixed in |
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