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astronomy midterm 1

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Question
Answer
Which of the following has your "cosmic address" in the correct order?   show
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show Nearly every atom from which we are made was once inside of a star.  
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show Galaxies recycle material from one generation of stars to the next, and without this recycling we could not exist  
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show as it was 1,000 years ago  
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Suppose we look at two distant galaxies: Galaxy 1 is twice as far away as Galaxy 2. In that case _________.   show
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Suppose we make a scale model of our solar system, with the Sun the size of a grapefruit. Which of the following best describes what the planets would look like?   show
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show Several thousand years  
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The total number of stars in the observable universe is about _________.   show
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show Roughly halfway between the center and the edge of the visible disk of the galaxy.  
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If we imagine the history of the universe compressed into one year, dinosaurs became extinct _________.   show
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Relative to the age of the universe, how old is our solar system?   show
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How do the speeds at which we are moving with Earth's rotation and orbit compare to the speeds of more familiar objects?   show
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Why do the patterns of the stars in our sky look the same from year to year?   show
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Astronomers infer that the universe is expanding because distant galaxies all appear to _________.   show
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Which statement about motion in the universe is not true?   show
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show Within the past 500 years.  
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show All planets are made of rock and all stars are made of gas.  
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show the Sun and all the objects that orbit it  
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A typical galaxy is a _________.   show
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show The sum total of all matter and energy.  
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What do astronomers mean by the Big Bang?   show
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show Average distances between galaxies are increasing with time.  
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Based on observations of the universal expansion, the age of the universe is about _________.   show
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A television advertisement claiming that a product is light-years ahead of its time does not make sense because _________.   show
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show that portion of the universe that we can see in principle, given the current age of the universe  
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show small enough to fit within your hand  
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show About the distance across the United States.  
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show a few hundred billion  
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show the average distance between Earth and the Sun  
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show The plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun.  
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show One year.  
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show A couple thousand.  
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show A constellation is a region in the sky as seen from Earth.  
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show The path the Sun appears to trace around the celestial sphere each year.  
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What is the celestial sphere?   show
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What do we mean when we talk about the Milky Way in our sky?   show
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show The angular distance between those two bright stars in the sky is about 2 meters.  
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Which of the following correctly describes the meridian in your local sky?   show
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The point directly over your head is called _________.   show
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show circumpolar  
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We describe a location on Earth's surface by stating its _________.   show
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show The altitude of the north celestial pole equals your latitude.  
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Which of the following best describes why we have seasons on Earth?   show
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show The cycle of the Moon's phases takes about a month. Earth's orbit defines a year. Earth's cycle of axis precession takes 26,000 years. Earth's rotation defines a day.  
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show In about 2 weeks.  
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show a new moon is quite near the Sun in the sky  
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The Moon always shows nearly the same face to Earth because ________.   show
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show full moon  
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show The roughly 18-year cycle over which the pattern of eclipses repeats  
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During the time that a planet is in its period of apparent retrograde motion: _________   show
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What is stellar parallax?   show
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Which of the following statements about the celestial sphere is NOT true?   show
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The Andromeda Galaxy is faintly visible to the naked eye in the constellation Andromeda. Suppose instead it were located in the same direction in space as the center of the Milky Way Galaxy . How would it appear to the eye in that case?   show
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show less than the thickness of a human hair held at arm's length  
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When traveling north from the United States into Canada, you'll see the North Star (Polaris) getting _________.   show
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show latitude 40 degrees south  
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Suppose you are facing north and you see the Big Dipper close to your northern horizon, with Polaris (and the Little Dipper) above it. Where will you see the Big Dipper in six hours?   show
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In any particular place on Earth, certain constellations are visible in the evening only at certain times of the year because _________.   show
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The Sun's path, as viewed from the equator, is highest in the sky on _________.   show
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Suppose Earth's axis tilt was significantly greater than its current 23.5 degrees, but Earth's rotation period and orbital period were unchanged. Which statement below would not be true?   show
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If our year were twice as long (that is, if Earth took twice as many days to complete each orbit around the Sun), but Earth's rotation period and axis tilt were unchanged, then _________.   show
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How does Earth's varying distance from the Sun affect our seasons?   show
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Suppose you live in the United States and you see a crescent moon in your evening sky tonight. What will a friend in South America see tonight?   show
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Suppose it is full moon. What phase of Earth would someone on the Moon see at this time?   show
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It's 6 am and the Moon is at its highest point in your sky (crossing the meridian). What is the Moon's phase?   show
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You observe a full moon rising at sunset. What will you see at midnight?   show
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All the following statements are true. Which one explains the reason that there is not a solar eclipse at every new moon?   show
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show Earth is stationary at the center of the universe  
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show Earth is catching up with and passing by Mars in their respective orbits.  
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show the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter in the 1990s  
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show The "celestial sphere" is another name for our universe  
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The Andromeda Galaxy is faintly visible to the naked eye in the constellation Andromeda. Suppose instead it were located in the same direction in space as the center of the Milky Way Galaxy How would it appear to the eye in that case?   show
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Which of the following represents a case in which you are not accelerating?   show
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Suppose you drop a 10-pound weight and a 5-pound weight on the Moon, both from the same height at the same time. What will happen?   show
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Why are astronauts weightless in the Space Station?   show
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show momentum  
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show It is the same.  
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show a force is acting on the planets  
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Suppose the Sun were suddenly to shrink in size but that its mass remained the same. According to the law of conservation of angular momentum, what would happen?   show
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Suppose you kick a soccer ball straight up to a height of 10 meters. Which of the following is true about the gravitational potential energy of the ball during its flight?   show
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show The water can transfer heat to your arm more quickly than the air.  
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Which of the following scenarios involves energy that we would typically calculate with Einstein's formula E=mc2?   show
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show The energy goes to producing sound and to heating the ground, rock, and surrounding air.  
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Suppose that the Sun shrank in size but that its mass remained the same. What would happen to the orbit of the Earth?   show
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Imagine another solar system, with a star of the same mass as the Sun. Suppose a planet with a mass twice that of Earth (2MEarth) orbits at a distance of 1 AU from the star. What is the orbital period of this planet?   show
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show The planet's year would be shorter than Earth's  
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show natural consequences of the law of universal gravitation  
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Each of the following lists two facts. Which pair of facts can be used with Newton's version of Kepler's third law to determine the mass of the Sun?   show
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show Saturn must have lost a very tiny bit of its orbital energy.  
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show The asteroid's orbit around Jupiter would not change, and it would go out on the same unbound orbit that it came in on  
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show Tides are caused by the difference in the force of gravity exerted by the Moon across the sphere of the Earth  
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show Both new and full moons  
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Which of the following best explains why the Moon's orbital period and rotation period are the same?   show
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Suppose the Moon's orbit were unchanged, but it rotated faster (meaning it did not have synchronous rotation). Which of the following would be true?   show
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The difference between speed and velocity is that _________.   show
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The acceleration of gravity on Earth is approximately 10 m/s2 (more precisely, 9.8 m/s2). If you drop a rock from a tall building, about how fast will it be falling after 3 seconds?   show
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show mass times velocity  
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show Your weight would be less than your weight on Earth, but your mass would be the same as it is on Earth.  
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In which of the following cases would you feel weightless?   show
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Which of the following statements is not one of Newton's Laws of Motion?   show
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Newton's Second Law of Motion tells us that the net force applied to an object equals its _________.   show
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show The total temperature of the objects  
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When a spinning ice skater pulls in his arms, he spins faster because _________.   show
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The energy attributed to an object by virtue of its motion is known as _________.   show
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show energy carried by light  
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Absolute zero is _________.   show
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What does temperature measure?   show
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show The mass-energy, or potential energy stored in an object's mass  
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show decreases by a factor of 9  
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show An object on a bound orbit follows the same path around the Sun over and over, while an object on an unbound orbit approaches the Sun just once and then never returns  
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The allowed shapes for the orbits of objects responding only to the force of gravity are ______.   show
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show It can be used to determine the masses of many distant objects.  
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What do we mean by the orbital energy of an orbiting object (such as a planet, moon, or satellite)?   show
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Which statement must be true in order for a rocket to travel from Earth to another planet?   show
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show On the portion of Earth facing directly toward the Moon and on the portion of Earth facing directly away from the Moon  
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What is the difference between energy and power?   show
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Visible light from a distant star can be spread into a spectrum by using a glass prism or ______.   show
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show They have a frequency of 2 hertz  
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Suppose you know the frequency of a photon and the speed of light. What else can you determine about the photon?   show
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show photons  
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show gamma rays, X rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, radio  
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show infrared and radio  
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show absorbs ultraviolet light  
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show Several kilometers  
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show They have different numbers of protons in their nucleus  
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Consider an atom of carbon in which the nucleus contains 6 protons and 7 neutrons. What is its atomic number and atomic mass number?   show
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show 4 electrons  
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Sublimation is the process in which ___________.   show
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show An electron begins in an excited state and then gains enough energy to jump to the ground state  
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An atom that has fewer electrons than protons is called a/an _________.   show
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show An emission line spectrum consists of bright lines on a dark background, while an absorption line spectrum consists of dark lines on a rainbow background.  
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show radiation with a spectrum whose shape depends only on the temperature of the emitting object  
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show a shorter average wavelength  
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Suppose you want to know the chemical composition of a distant star. Which piece of information is most useful to you?   show
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The spectra of most galaxies show redshifts. This means that their spectral lines _________.   show
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show The galaxy is moving away from you  
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show 6,000 joules  
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Which of the following statements is true of green grass?   show
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show The radio waves from the radio station are causing electrons in your radio's antenna to move up and down 97 million times each second.  
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show wavelength  
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show 1 meter  
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show The passage of a light wave can cause electrically charged particles to move up and down.  
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Which of the following statements about X rays and radio waves is not true?   show
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show Atom 1: nucleus with 7 protons and 8 neutrons, surrounded by 7 electrons; Atom 2: nucleus with 7 protons and 7 neutrons, surrounded by 7 electrons  
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Suppose you had molecular oxygen (O2) chilled enough so that it was in liquid form. Which of the following best describes the phase changes that would occur as you heated the liquid oxygen to high temperature?   show
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show Charge = +2; number of remaining electrons = 6.  
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show Electrons orbit the nucleus rather like planets orbiting the Sun  
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Which of the following conditions lead you to see an absorption line spectrum from a cloud of gas in interstellar space?   show
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show a hot, thin (low-density, nearly transparent) gas  
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Which of the following statements about thermal radiation is always true?   show
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Betelgeuse is the bright red star representing the left shoulder of the constellation Orion. All the following statements about Betelgeuse are true. Which one can you infer from its red color?   show
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The planet Neptune is blue in color. How would you expect the spectrum of visible light from Neptune to be different from the visible-light spectrum of the Sun?   show
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show The temperature of the corona's gas is some 1 to 2 million Kelvin.  
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show The star is moving toward us.  
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Suppose that Star X and Star Y both have redshifts, but Star X has a larger redshift than Star Y. What can you conclude?   show
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If we observe one edge of a planet to be redshifted and the opposite edge to be blueshifted, what can we conclude about the planet?   show
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Studying a spectrum from a star can tell us a lot. All of the following statements are true except one. Which statement is not true?   show
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show The faster rotating star has wider spectral lines than the slower rotating star.  
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show The one that still looks sharp at large size has better (smaller) angular resolution than the one that looks fuzzy.  
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The angular separation of two stars is 0.1 arcseconds and you photograph them with a telescope that has an angular resolution of 1 arcsecond. What will you see?   show
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show The photograph will have far better angular resolution than you can see with your eye.  
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Which of the following best describes the principle advantage of CCDs over photographic film?   show
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show The 8-meter telescope has 16 times the light-collecting area of the 2-meter telescope  
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show The world's most powerful telescope remained the same for most of this period, but in the past 20 years many new and more powerful telescopes have been built.  
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Which of the following best describes why radio telescopes are generally much larger in size than telescopes designed to collect visible light?   show
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show Studying how a star's brightness varies over a period of 3 years.  
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show The thin air on mountaintops makes the glass in telescope mirrors less susceptible to warping.  
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The stars in our sky twinkle in brightness and color because of ______.   show
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show It is closer to the stars  
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The Chandra X-ray Observatory must operate in space because:   show
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Which of the following telescopes would benefit most from adaptive optics?   show
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show Observatory X can detect dimmer stars and Observatory Y reveals more detail in images.  
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show Telescopes on the Moon could see objects in all parts of the sky equally well, whereas telescopes on Earth can see only portions of the sky that depend on their latitude  
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What is the ecliptic?   show
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What do we mean when we talk about the Milky Way in our sky?   show
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Which of the following best explains why a solar day is longer than a sidereal day?   show
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When should we next expect to observe a transit of the Sun by Mars?   show
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show Venus  
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Suppose you have a time-keeping device that always reads precisely 12:00 when the Sun crosses your meridian. What kind of time is this clock keeping?   show
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All the following statements are true. Which one explains why mean solar time differs from apparent solar time?   show
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As viewed from any place within the continental United States, noon on apparent solar time is defined as the moment when the Sun is ______.   show
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show A tropical year is slightly more than 365 days.  
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show Deneb  
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Suppose you live at latitude 30S. Which star is circumpolar in your sky?   show
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Suppose that you are looking at the sky at about midnight on the winter solstice. Which star will be nearest to your meridian?   show
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show The Sun will pass directly overhead around noon each day.  
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Suppose Earth's axis had a greater tilt (more than 23.5 degrees). Which of the following statements would not be true?   show
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Which of the following explains why navigators prior to a few hundred years ago found it much more difficult to determine longitude than latitude?   show
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show On the Tropic of Cancer near the International Date Line.  
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show latitude 30N, longitude 45 west  
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show Nearly all comets orbit the Sun in same direction and roughly the same plane.  
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Which of the following is not a major difference between the terrestrial and jovian planets in our solar system?   show
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show The Kuiper belt contains icy comets, not rocky asteroids.  
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show Asteroids orbit the Sun while comets just float randomly around in the Oort cloud.  
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The following statements are all true. Which one counts as an "exception to the rule" in being unusual for our solar system?   show
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Compared to the distance between Earth and Mars, the distance between Jupiter and Saturn is ______.   show
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Einstein's famous equation, E=mc 2, explains the fact that __________.   show
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Venus has a higher average surface temperature than Mercury. Why?   show
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show Both planets are nearly the same size.  
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Which of the following statements about the recently-discovered object Eris is not true?   show
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show small asteroids  
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show It would crash in the ocean.  
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Which planet listed below has the most extreme seasons?   show
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show It is made mostly of rock and ice.  
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Why was it advantageous for the Voyager mission to consist of flybys rather than orbiters?   show
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Why has NASA sent recent orbiters to Mars (such as Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) on trajectories that required them to skim through Mars's atmosphere before settling into their final orbits?   show
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What is nuclear fusion?   show
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Why do we see essentially the same face of the Moon at all times?   show
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Why do we have seasons on Earth?   show
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Why is it summer in the Northern Hemisphere when it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere?   show
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show Kepler  
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He discovered that Jupiter has moons.   show
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Which of the following statements correctly describes the law of conservation of energy?   show
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show inversely proportional to the square of the distance between objects  
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What quantities does angular momentum depend upon?   show
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show mass times acceleration.  
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show The elevator is accelerating downwards.  
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show An electron moves from an upper energy level to a lower one.  
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show all of the above  
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If a material is transparent, then it   show
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Telescopes operating at this wavelength must be cooled to observe faint astronomical objects.   show
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show bending of light rays by turbulent layers in the atmosphere  
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What is the purpose of adaptive optics?   show
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show 10 m  
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show Light pollution refers to light used for human activities that brightens the sky and hinders astronomical observations.  
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How does the Sun's mass compare with that of the planets?   show
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show Most planets orbit at the same speed.  
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show Venus, because of its dense carbon dioxide atmosphere  
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show Mars  
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Which planet has a ring system?   show
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show hydrogen and helium  
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show Mercury.  
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Plato   show
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Aristotle   show
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Eratosthenes   show
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show star chart, motion and models of planets moon and sun,  
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Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric model   show
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show earth and inferior planets orbit the sun, retrograde motion is when we "lap" the other planets.  
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Tycho Brahe   show
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show Each planets orbit around the sun is an ellipse, with the sun at one focus.  
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show A planets moves along its orbit with a speed that changes it in such a way that a line from the planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time.  
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Keplers 3rd Law   show
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