Astronomy 101 Chapter 6

Which of the following best describes why radio telescopes are generally much larger in size than telescopes designed to collect visible light?

Getting an image of the same angular resolution requires a much larger telescope for radio waves than for visible light

What best describes the principle advantage of CCDs over photographic film?

CCDs capture a much higher percentage of the incoming photons than film

Which of the following is not an advantage of the Hubble Space Telescope over ground-based telescopes?

It is closer to the stars

Which of the following studies is best suited to astronomical observations that fall into the category called timing?

Studying how a star's brightness varies over a period of 3 years

How does the light-collecting area of an 8-meter telescope compare to that of a 2-meter telescope?

The 8-meter telescope has 16 times the light-collecting area of the 2-meter telescope

Which telescope would benefit most from adaptive optics?

The Keck I telescope on Mauna Kea

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?

The photo will seem to show only one star rather than two

Suppose you point your telescope at a distant object. Which of the following is not an advantage of taking a photograph of the object through the telescope as compared to just looking at the object through the telescope?

The photograph will have far better angular resolution than you can see with your eye

Which of the following is not a reason why telescopes tend to be built on mountaintops that are relatively far from cities and are in regions with dry climates?

The thin air on mountaintops makes the glass in telescope mirrors less susceptible to warping

The Chandra X-ray Observatory must operate in space because

X rays do not penetrate Earth's atmosphere