CHapter 3 and 4

The planet closest to the sun in the solar system is

Mercury

You are the captain of an interplanetary tour ship and a wealthy tourist from Maryland asks you to take him to see only the "largest darn planets" in the solar system. Which of the following would you NOT include in your tour?

Mercury

Our best evidence and theoretical calculations indicate that the solar system began with a giant spinning system of gas and dust that scientists call:

The solar nebula

The U.S. has plans to build a 30-meter telescope, while the Europeans are thinking about 39-meter telescope. What technological innovation allows astronomers to be thinking about telescopes with that large an aperture

They mirror in these telescopes will be constructed from many smaller mirrors which will work together

Our textbook discusses that radio astronomers are building more and more arrays of radio telescopes, where many "dishes" are connected together. What advantage do such arrays have?

They provide a higher resolution than individual dishes

Of the following planets, which do NOT have satellites (moons)?

Venus

The inner planets are made mostly of rock and metal because:

it was so hot where the inner planets formed that the lighter materials evaporated.

In general, the further planets are from the Sun, the cooler they are. What other factor can have a significant influence on a planet's surface temperature?

its atmosphere (whether it has one and how thick it is)

Which of the following ways that jovian (giant) planets differ from the terrestrial planets is NOT CORRECT

jovians (being larger) rotate significantly more slower then terrestrials

The two regions of the electromagnetic spectrum where the Earth's atmosphere is transparent (radiation can get in) are visible light and:

some radio waves

An astronomer who is observing visible light from a glowing cloud of gas in space uses an instrument which contains a grating with thousands of grooves on its surface. What will this instrument allow our astronomers to do?

spread out the light from the cloud into a spectrum

When a knowledgeable amateur astronomer tells you that she has a 14-inch telescope, what does the number 14 refer to

the diameter of the primary lens or mirror

Which of the following types of telescopes can be used ONLY above the Earth's atmosphere

x-ray telescope

Which of the following is NOT a terrestrial planet?

Jupiter

During the process of differentiation,

heavier materials sink to the centers of molten planets

What type of telescope can be used routinely on the surface of the Earth during the DAY?

A radio telescope

The smaller objects in the solar system composed mainly of ices (frozen gases) that usually orbit far from the Sun are called:

Comets

The first person who regularly turned a telescope to astronomical observations (and published his observations) was

Galileo Galilei

If you were to take a large sample of the four giant planets, the most common element you would find in them is:

Hydrogen

When the James Webb Telescope was finally launched, what was its distinguishing characteristic ( what about it will really help astronomers)?

It has the largest mirror ever put into space for observing faint objects

At the largest and most modern astronomical observatories on Earth today, which of the following regularly happens to the images formed by the telescope

It is recorded using an electronic detector called a CCD for later analysis

A planet in our solar system whose composition resembles that of our Sun is:

Jupiter

Which planet in the solar system has NOT been examined by spacecraft by instruments that have either flown by or orbited them

Pluto

Which of the following is NOT an advantage that the Hubble Space Telescope has over large telescopes on Earth

The Hubble has a larger aperture than any visible-light telescope on Earth

On Earth, we can get the age of various parts of our planet by finding rocks that contain radioactive atoms. Which other world do we have a good number of rocks from to do this kind of age analysis?

The Moon

In the far future, a visiting tourist from another planetary system asks to see the most massive object in our solar system. Where would you take him/her/it?

The Sun

Radio telescopes of the modest size can't make out as much detail (have a lower resolution) than visible light telescopes. How do astronomers overcome this limitation

We can connect several radio telescopes some distance apart together electronically to give us the resolution of a larger telescope

On which the planets (other than Earth) could a human being step out of a spacecraft and survive without any protective gear (special suit, oxygen tanks, etc)?

You can't fool me; there is no other planet on which we could survive unprotected

The largest visible-light telescopes in the world use what device to collect as much light as possible before the light is brought to a focus (light bucket)

a mirror

Which of the following is not an advantage that reflector telescope has over a refractor telescope

a reflector doesn't have to deal with the twinkling of the stars, as a refractor does

Which of the following is NOT a detector of radiation from space that astronomers have used

a refracting telescope

To break up light into the component colors that it contains, astronomers used a device called

a spectrometer

Radioactive dating techniques have revealed that our Earth and Moon are approximately how would?

about 4.5 billion years

To overcome the problems that blur images and don't provide the best resolution from Earth, astronomers have started using flexible mirrors that can change shape many times each second. This technique is called:

adaptive optics

The smaller objects in the solar system made of rock and metal (most of which orbit between Jupiter and Mars) are called:

asteroids

Why do astronomers prefer to put infrared telescopes on high-flying airplanes or on satellites in space

because of the water vapor in the lower atmosphere is very good at absorbing infrared

Why do telescopes have to have a good motorized drive system to move them quickly and smoothly?

because the Earth is rotating, with the telescope attached to it

A new technique called adaptive optics allows astronomers to

compensate for changes in the Earth's atmosphere and achieve better resolution

What is one way that astronomers could have actually gotten an idea of the age of the surfaces of terrestrial planets other than the Earth

counting craters

The Chandra Observatory orbiting the Earth is designed to

examine sources of cosmic x-rays

One piece of evidence that can help astronomers sort out how the planets in our solar system formed is

finding circumstellar disks of material around nearby stars

In radioactive dating, the measure scientists use to note how long (on average) a particular nucleus will take to decay is called its

half-life

You are an astronomer who wants to study a faint star in the process of being born, which gives off most of its faint radiation in the infra-red. which of the following would NOT be a step you would want to take?

heat your telescope, so its delicate optics are cold

From an astronomical perspective, where would be the best location to put the world's largest visible-light gathering telescope?

on a tall, dry mountain peak

The material that would eventually make all major bodies in our solar system first gathered together as smaller pieces which astronomers call:

planetesimals

The first trans-neptunian object astronomers found (in 1930) called

pluto

the earliest telescopes used by astronomers were

refractors

All the planets (without exception)

revolved around the sun in the same direction

What was the major problem with the Hubble Space Telescope when it was first launched into orbit?

the mirror's shape was slightly wrong, so all the light did not come to a single focus

Which of the following characteristics do all four terrestrial planets have in common

they all have solid surfaces with signs of geological activity on them