The system of stars to which the Solar System belongs is the

The approximate travel time for light to travel to Earth from

 the Andromeda Galaxy, the large galaxy nearest our own,

 is 

2.5 million years

The term which refers to the production of heavier

 atoms from lighter ones is

nucleosynthesis

Which logical fallacy is embodied in the following?

 "Most people consider it a fact that the Earth goes

 around the Sun; therefore the Earth must actually

 go around the Sun."

appeal to belief

The Moon goes around the Earth eastwards. 

Viewed from the North looking South, which 

direction is this?

counterclockwise

The imaginary circle on the celestial sphere 

midway between the celestial poles is the 

celestial equator

At the North Pole, the stars 

 move in circles parallel to the horizon

The point on the ecliptic where the Sun passes 

from south of the celestial equator to north is 

the 

vernal equinox 

You see the first quarter Moon on the meridian. 

Where is the Sun?

On the western horizon

Because of refraction and reddening of sunlight 

by the Earth's atmosphere, when the Moon goes 

completely into the Earth's umbra 

it turns red

Lunar eclipses can happen 

only when the Moon is full and the Sun is near the line of nodes

According to Kepler's Second Law of Planetary 

Motion a planet's orbital speed is greatest when 

it is 

at perihelion

The same amount of force is applied to two bodies.

 Body B is twice as massive as Body A. Which of 

the following is true of the accelerations of the two?

Body A will be accelerated twice as much as Body B.

The name for the force that keeps an object 

moving in uniform circular motion is

centripetal force 

We say that gravitation is an "inverse-square" 

force. This means that if the distance between 

the two is doubled (2 times greater) the strength 

of the attraction between them is then 

one-fourth (1/4) as great

Venus is slightly smaller in radius than the Earth. 

Suppose it had exactly the same mass as Earth. 

Which of the following statements would then be 

correct?

You would weigh more on Venus than you do on Earth.

The Sun is 300,000 times as massive as the Earth.

 The center of mass of the Earth and Sun by 

themselves is 

close to the Sun's center

Kinetic energy is

energy of motion

Gravitational potential energy is negative when

the object is below the reference level, which is arbitrarily chosen

In the cannonball example (two-body problem), 

the launch speed for a hyperbolic orbit is

greater than the parabolic/escape velocity 

Conservation of angular momentum means that if 

a gas cloud is spinning and it shrinks in radius it 

will

spin faster to compensate for the smaller distance of mass from the rotation axis

According to Newton's version of Kepler's Third 

Law, for a given orbital period P the larger the 

semimajor axis a of the relative orbit is,

the larger the sum of the masses (m_1 + m_2) is 

With electromagnetic waves produced by an 

oscillating electric charge, if the wavelength is 

decreased the frequency will

be increased

The type of telescope that uses a glass lens to 

focus light is the 

refractor 

 Which of the following telescopes has the best diffraction-limited (theoretical) resolution?

Keck 10 meter

A 10 meter telescope has the best 

diffraction-limited resolution at which of the 

following wavelengths?

550 nanometers 

Which of the following photons has the highest 

energy?

gamma-ray

Which of the following colors of visible light has the

 longest wavelength?

orange

The main purpose of combining radio telescopes in

 an interferometer array such as the VLA is to 

obtain higher resolution

Earth's atmosphere is least transparent in which 

of the following regions of the electromagnetic 

spectrum?

X-ray

Stars form

in cold, dense regions inside giant molecular clouds

Hydrostatic equilibrium is a balance between

self-gravity and pressure force

Temperature is

a number that describes the average kinetic energy of a set of particles

The energy source for a protostar before it 

becomes a star is 

gravitational potential energy

If the density of a gas is increased while the 

temperature stays the same, the pressure 

will increase 

A protostar becomes a star when which of the 

following happens?

nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium ignites

Which of the following sets of properties most 

closely matches with jovian planets?

low density, low surface temperature, many moons

When a star is receding (moving away from us) 

compared to the center of mass of a 

star-exoplanet pair, the Doppler effect causes it to

 have

positive radial velocity (redshift)

The method of detecting exoplanets that depends 

on observing the very slight dimming of a star's 

light when the planet passes in front of it is called 

the transit method