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