ASTR-100 Final Review

If you want to check on what conditions were like in the universe a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, what sort of instrument would it be best to use?

a satellite with infrared and microwave telescopes on board

Factoring in everything we currently know about the history of the universe, our best estimate for the age of the universe is

about 13.8 billion years

Edwin Hubble was able to show that (with the exception of our closest neighbors) the farther a galaxy is from us, the

faster it is moving away from us

Our Milky Way Galaxy is what type of galaxy?

spiral

Which of the following is pretty good evidence that the universe began with a Big Bang?

the 3-degree cosmic microwave background radiation

Which of the following objects is considered useful to astronomers as a "standard candle" for determining distances?

white dwarf supernovae

The two scientists who first discovered the cosmic background radiation were

Penzias and Wilson

One of the most important observations in the history of astronomy was the one by Edwin Hubble that established that there are other galaxies, quite removed from the Milky Way. How did Hubble show this?

by observing a Cepheid variable in a nearby galaxy and using it to gat the distance

Which type of galaxy is observed to contain mostly old stars?

elliptical

Where in space did the expansion of the universe begin?

everywhere at once