Astronomy (Exam 1)
The point in the sky directly above your head at any given time is called the
zenith
A large body in space that consistently makes its own light (instead of merely reflecting another body's light) is called
a star
You are on a camping trip, far away from city lights. You look up into the dark night sky, and see lots of stars, some brighter, some dimmer. All the stars you see with your unaided eye are
in the Milky Way Galaxy
In the Northern Hemisphere, the altitude (height in degrees above the horizon) of the North Star is always roughly equal to the
latitude of the observer
According to the geocentric view, everything in the heavens had to go around the Earth, which was the center of the universe. What objects did Galileo discover with his telescope that clearly didn't go around the Earth?
moons around the planet Jupiter
All molecules (like molecules of water or carbon dioxide) are made up of
very small pieces of dust, from the material that lies between the stars
A star is 230 light years away. The light we see tonight from that star left it ______.
230 year ago
Light travels 3 x 105meters every second. That number in words is
300,000 meters
The laws of nature (as determined by scientists) can be described many ways. Mark all that are correct. A. are often written in the language of mathematics B. Apply both on Earth and among stars C. Are constructed from many observations, hypotheses, and experiments D. Can never, ever change once they are written down in textbooks.
A, B, and C
In what fundamental way did the work of Galileo differ from his predecessors who had thought about the sky?
Galileo used instruments and experiments to show him what nature was doing, instead of relying on pure logic
The natural object (not one that humans built) in space that's closest to Earth is
The Moon
Of these, which is the largest?
Universe
Which of the following is the Earth NOT located in?
You can't fool me, we are located in all of these
The location of the Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy is _____.
a little less than 30,000 LY from the center
The smallest piece of an element (like gold or lead) that still has all the properties of that element is called
an atom
From a city in the U.S., where in the sky would you look to see a star that is not turning with the motion of the sky in the course of a night?
at the north celestial pole
How did Eratosthenes measure the size of the Earth?
by measuring the height of the Sun in the sky on the same day in two cities at different latitudes
The 88 sectors into which astronomers today divide the celestial sphere (the whole sky) are called:
constellations
The way scientists know that a hypothesis in astronomy is a reasonable description of nature is to
do experiments and observations about the predictions of the hypothesis.
By the term universe, astronomers mean
everything that we can observe
When it comes to our place in the solar system today, which model do we accept?
heliocentric
The star that provides energy for life on Earth is ______.
the Sun
The Astronomical Unit (AU) as defined by astronomers is
the average distance between the Earth and the Sun
A light year is ______.
the distance that light travels in one year
For scientists, an element (like gold) is defined by
the number of protons