Astronmy
The Earth's escape speed (the speed you need to get away forever) is about 25,000 miles per hour. Escape speed depends on the gravity of the object trying to hold the spacecraft from escaping. Based on your understanding of gravity, how will the escape speed from the Moon compare to the escape speed from Earth?
(5) The Moon's escape speed will be smaller than Earth's.
The latitude of the Earth's equator is
0 degrees
Express 9.1 x 10^-4 in decimal notation.
0.00091.
When England and the American colonies finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, what dramatic change had to be made?
10 days had to be dropped to bring the date and the seasons back into accord.
Betelgeuse is a red and very bright star in the constellation of Orion. Its mass is known to be 11 solar masses, what is that mass in kilograms?
2.188x1031 kg.
Imagine you have a friend living on Mars and you communicate with he/she via light pulses. Assuming that your friend replies immediately after she/he receives your first signal and that there are no delays of any kind, after how many minutes will you hear back from him/her after you sent your first signal?
25.4 minutes.
Express 0.0047 in scientific notation, this is, expressed in powers of ten notation.
4.7x10-3.
A star is 500 light years away. The light we see tonight from that star left it
500 years ago.
Calculate (3.0 x 10^4 ) x (2.5 x 10^-2).
7.5 x 102.
An astronomy textbook, when printed out, has a weight W on the surface of the Earth. After finishing your course, you are so tired of the book, you arrange for NASA to shoot it into space. When it is twice as far from the center of the Earth than when you were reading it, wh will its weight be? (Note, assume that the book has been moving away from the Earth, not falling freely around it.)
A quarter the original weight (W/4).
in the absence of a strong magnetic field, what is the chief facter that determines what type of electromagnetic radiation objects give off
A their temperature
A graduate student in geology who grew up in Florida (near the southernmost tip of the United States) gets to accompany her research professor to the North Pole. What will be different at the North Pole from the way she remembers the sky in Florida?
All of the above would be different from the way it is in Florida.
Which ancient Greek thinker suggested (long before Copernicus) that the Earth is moving around the Sun?
Aristarchus
Based on the scientific and statistical tests of astrological predictions, which of the following statements is the most reasonable?
Astrology has not passed any clear scientific or statistical test and, as a result, most scientists are very doubtful that it ca predict anything meaningful about our lives..
According to the analogy of the history of Earth in a clock, what of the following appeared first?
Green algae.
The first radio telescope was built in the 1930's by
Karl Jansky
The idea that atoms radiate energy only when their electrons move from higher to lower energy levels was first advanced by
Niels Bohr
According to the scientific method, what steps are in the correct order?
Question, hypothesis, observations/experiment.
Some college students decide to form a secret society that would meet each year after graduation at a time when the day and night were the same length. Which of the following would be a time they could meet?
September 23.
The first artificial satellite the human race lofted into orbit was called:
Sputnik
Two stars have the same diameter and are at the same distance from us (but in different parts of the sky.) Star A has a temperature of 4000 K, while star 3 has a temperature of 8000K. Which of the following statements is true
Star 5 has 16 times the energy flux (luminosity) that star A has
The south celestial pole and the north celestial pole lie in the sky directly above:
The Earth's axis.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way is part of a cluster or group of galaxies, what is the name of that group?
The Local Group.
How does the Sun influence the tides that we experience on Earth?
The Sun also raises tides on Earth, but its effect is smaller than that of the Moon
A very rich, very shady international banker (with residences all over the globe) mysteriously disappears. Someone later mails a wide-angle photo of his body to a London newspaper, taken on June 22, showing the Sun exactly overhead at noon. What can the police deduce from this photograph about where on Earth the body is located?
The correct answer is (4) on the Tropic of Cancer (23 degress N).
The celestial sphere turns once around each day because:
The planet on which we live is rotating.
Which statement about the Moon's solar month and the Moon's sidereal month is correct?
The solar month is more than two days longer than the sidereal month.
After a long night of cramming for a test, your college room-mate hits his head forcefully against the wall of your room in despair. According to Newton's 3rd Law, as he exerts a force against the wall, there must be an equal and opposite force. How does that opposite force show itself in this case?
The wall exerts a force on your room-mate's head and he has a headache.
What specific event really made it possible for the three laws of planetary motion to be discovered?
Tycho Brahe died and his assistant was able to get full access to his data.
Which of the following statements about the International Date Line is correct?
When crossing from west to east, you must decrease the date by one day.
Which of the following has the greatest density?
a cubic meter of lead
In a radio telescope, the role that the mirror plays in visible-light telescopes is played by:
a large metal dish (antenna).
A graduate student is trying to follow the weather on Jupiter for her PhD thesis. To see the big weather patterns in the upper atmosphere of the planet, she needs to have excellent resolution. What type of telescope would be best for her to use?
a large reflector located in orbit above the Earth's atmosphere.
Which of the following statements about photons is FALSE
a photon of visible light cannot pass through the atmosphere of the Earth, and thus cannot be seen at the Earth's surface
A Hertz is
a unit of frequency
A dashing Romanian count asks his sweetheart to marry him. She says she will give her reply when the Moon is full. If he asked when the Moon was at first quarter, how long will he have to wait?
about a week.
Two stars are giving off electromagnetic radiation. The hatter star will
all of the above
If you could see the new moon, at what time of day (roughly) would it rise?
at sunrise.
An eccentric billionaire wants to build a mansion in a location on Earth where the effect of the seasons is the least pronounced -- where summer and winter are not that different. Where should his personal astronomer advise him to build?
at the equator.
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 minimum speed required to launch an object so that it remains the same distance above the ground and just falls around the Earth is called:
circular satellite velocity.
The most important function of an astronomical telescope is to:
collect as much light as possible and bring it to a focus
A new technique called adaptive optics allows astronomers to:
compensate for changes in the Earth's atmosphere and achieve better resolution.
The 88 sectors into which astronomers today divide the celestial sphere (the whole sky) are called:
constellations
Astronomers observe a typical star using a telescope and a spectrometer. They will see
continuous spectrum a Doppler shift an absorption spectrum an emission spectrum E more than one of the above
Which of the following was NOT done by Galileo Galilei?
explaining retrograde motion with the heliocentric hypothesis.
In Australia (in the Southern Hemisphere), when are the days the shortest and the nights the longest?
in late June.
You are alone in a large, completely dark auditonium on Earth. What kind of telescope should I use from the other side of the ✔auditorium to detect the electromagnetic radiation emitted by your body?
infra red
The Julian calendar made the significant advance of:
introducing the leap year, so that every fourth year had an extra day
When NASA and a group of astronomers sent up a spacecraft designed to find planets orbiting other stars, they named it after Kepler. Why was this an appropriate name?
is (1) Kepler figured out the rules of planetary motion, which planets in our solar system and planets elsewhere must obey.
One reason that human eyes evolved to detect visible light is:
it is a band of the spectrum where the Sun puts out a great deal of energy
Which of the following statements about the force of gravity is FALSE?
its strength is inversely proportional to the mass: the more mass, the less gravity.
The planet Neptune was discovered by means of:
mathematical calculations of how it was perturbing the motion of a neighbor planet
When a planet, in its orbit, is closer to the Sun, it:
moves faster than average
Which of the following has the highest frequency? x
radio waves
fashion designer decides to bring out a new line of clothing which reflects the longest wavelength of visible light What color will these articles of clothing be to the human eye eye?
red
A serial killer from a strange cult only kills her victims when the Moon is full. She leaves a note on the body of her latest victim, explaining that the murder was committed when the Moon was rising. What time of day did the murder take place?
roughly around sunset.
To break up light into the component colors that it contains, astronomers use a device called:
spectrometer.
A bride and groom, who are enchanted by the Sun, want to get married on the day when it gets to be highest in the sky. If they live in the United States, around what day of the year will the wedding take place?
summer solstice.
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.
In what location on Earth could an eager math student NOT use her solar-powered calculator at any time at all during the course of a day in June?
the South Pole.
Which of the following is an important part of the reason it is hotter in summer in North America than in winter?
the Sun's rays hit the Earth more directly in the Summer, and spread out less.
Of the following, which has the highest resolution (ability to make out fine detail):
the Very Long Baseline Array of Radio Telescopes, stretching from the Virgin Islands to Hawaii.
In an ellipse, the ratio of the distance between the foci and the length of the major axis is called:
the eccentricity.
Which of the following statements about the nucleus of a typical atamn (such as a carbon atom in your little finger) i FALSE
the nucleus repels the electrons which move around it
When they build big new (visible-light) telescopes, astronomers want to put them in places where they will get the best views of the sky. Which of the following is not an important part of how astronomers select places for new telescopes?"
the place must be near a university or college.
Which of the following statements about electromagnetic radiation FALSE?
the radiation consists of tiny charged particles given off by the nucles of albis
Which of the following is not a type of electromagnetic waves and has lower energy than visible light waves?
the sound waves coming from your transistor radio
Someone who observes the sky every clear night in Boston for many years will NEVER get to see:
the south circumpolar zone
What would you have to change about the Earth to stop our planet from having significantly different seasons?
the tilt of its axis.
How did the world's countries solve the problem that mean solar time varies continuously as a traveler's longitude changes?
the world was divided into 24 time zones, with all communities within a time zone keeping the same mean standard time.
Which of the following statements about forces is FALSE?
there are places on Earth where all forces are absent.
Astronomers discover a new comet that orbits the Sun, but has its aphelion (the furthest point in its orbit) beyond Neptune. Astronomers studying this comet have the right to expect that it:
will follow Newton's laws of motion.
A single star in the process of forming starts by spinning slowly (while it is quite large and relatively cool.) As the star collapses under the pull of its own gravity, its size decreases. As a result, its rate of spinning:
will increase
The scientist who first devised experimental tests to demonstrate the validity of the heliocentric model of the solar system was:
Galileo
The first person who regularly turned a telescope to astronomical observations (and published his observations) was:
Galileo Galilei.
When people say that astronomers are like police detectives trying to solve crimes, they are explaining that:
Both astronomers and detectives must test their hypotheses against any evidence that they gather.
The fact that each type of atom has a unique pattern of electron orbits helps explain why
each type of atom shows different absorption or emission spectra
