A solar system contains

How many centimeters are there in one kilometer?

The average distance from Earth to the sun is

64,200,000,000 is equal to

6.42 x 10¹⁰

4.4´10⁶ divided by 8.8´10¹⁰ is equal to

5.0 x 10^-5

If light takes 8 minutes to reach Earth from the sun and 5.3 hours to reach Pluto, what is the approximate distance from the sun to Pluto?

The sun is

If the nearest star is 4.2 light-years away, then

Which arrangement is in order of increasing size, left to right?

planet, star, solar system, galaxy

The Milky Way Galaxy

In science fiction movies, it is common to use a space craft to travel across the Milky Way Galaxy or to assert that we have been visited by alien space craft from the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. If one has a space craft that can travel at the speed of light, to an observer on the earth, how long will it take to go from one edge of the Milky Way Galaxy to the other and return?

Suppose we wish to travel to the nearest star using a super space ship capable of traveling at 1´10¹⁰ km/yr. We have nothing even close to this space ship yet. How long will it take us to get to the nearest star which is about 4´10¹³ km away from us?

Which sequence is correct when ordered by increasing size?

Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, galaxy clusters

If we say that an object is 1,000 light-years away we see it

as it looked 1,000 years ago.

If the distance from the Sun to the Earth is represent by roughly 15 meters, then the distance from the Earth to the Moon on the same scale would be

smaller than your hand

In one way of naming stars, a ____ letter indicates its brightness relative to the other stars in the constellation.

Most of the constellations in use today originated in ____ mythology.

____ is the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Majoris

a Ursa Majoris

The apparent visual magnitude of a star is 7.3. This tells us that the star is

not visible with the unaided eye.

Table 2-1

Which star in Table 2-1 would not be visible to the unaided eye of an observer on Earth?

Nim

The celestial equator is

a line around the sky directly above Earth's equator, and the dividing line between the north and south celestial hemispheres

An observer in the Northern Hemisphere watches the sky for several hours. Due to the motion of Earth, this observer notices that the stars near the north celestial pole appear to move

counter clockwise.

You live at a latitude of 39° S. What is the angle between the southern horizon and the south celestial pole?

You live at a latitude of 16° S. What is the angle between the southern horizon and the south celestial pole?

What is the approximate latitude of the observer in the diagram below?

[image]

50° N

An observer in the Northern Hemisphere takes a time exposure photograph of the night sky. If the illustration depicts the photograph taken by the observer, which direction was the camera pointing?

[image]

An observer in the Northern Hemisphere takes a time exposure photograph of the night sky. If the illustration depicts the photograph taken by the observer, which direction was the camera pointing?

[image]

When it is winter in the northern hemisphere, it is ____ in the southern hemisphere.

The sun moves ____ along the ecliptic among the stars.

The summer solstice (at the start of summer) is the point on the ecliptic where the sun

is farthest north of the celestial equator halting its northward movement

At the time of the winter solstice (the start of winter) the sun is

farthest south of the celestial equator

At the time of the winter solstice (the start of winter) the sunlight is at a lower angle and thus is ____ than(as) in the start of summer.

The inclination of the axis of the earth varies from 22° to 24° degrees taking ____ to complete a cycle.

41,000 years

During the month of June the north celestial pole points towards Polaris but during the month of December it points

The first quarter moon rises

A lunar eclipse occurs when

Earth passes between the Earth's moon and the sun.

During a total lunar eclipse, which of the following are true?

A totally eclipsed moon glows coppery red because

red light is better able to pass completely through Earth's atmosphere and reach the moon

During a total lunar eclipse

the moon will glow a coppery red.

If the moon enters Earth's shadow but does not reach the umbra, the eclipse is termed

penumbral.

A marble has a diameter of 2 cm. At what distance would the marble have an angular diameter of 1 arc second? Here one radian is 57.3 degrees, and one arc second is 1/3600 of a degree.

If the Moon's orbital plane was aligned with the celestial equator we could

have eclipses only at the equinoxes.

In which direction does the daily motion of the Moon occur in the sky, against the background stars, when viewed from the Earth?

True or False? Parallax is the apparent change in location of an object due to the motion of the observer.

Which of these were things ancient Greek astronomers never even considered in astronomy

Wrong! They considered the possibility of all the above

The Almagest

is a collection of the science and mathematics of the Greeks.

A(n) ____ is a circle whose center is located on the circumference of another circle    

epicycle

Ptolemy's model of the universe

____ introduced the concept of the eccentrics and epicycle to planetary motion about Earth, created a star catalog, and is generally credited with the development of trigonometry.

Hipparchus

The distance from Alexandria to Syene is about 500 miles. On the summer solstice the sun is directly overhead at noon in Syene. At Alexandria on the summer solstice, the sun is 1/50th of the circumference of the sky (about 7°) south of the zenith. Based on this information, what is the circumference of Earth?

Which of the following people did not accept a heliocentric model of the universe?

The book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium"

True or False? The Ptolemaic model of the universe was heliocentric.

The Copernican system was no more accurate than the Ptolemaic system in predicting the positions of the planets because

the Copernican system included uniform circular motion.

Brahe's universe was the same as the Copernican universe except that

Earth did not move

Tycho Brahe's greatest contribution to astronomy was

his years of careful observations of the planets

A ____ is a commonly accepted set of scientific ideas and assumptions

Galileo's observations of the gibbous phase of Venus proved

that Venus orbits the sun.

Galileo's telescopic discoveries of mountains on the moon and spots on the sun were controversial because they suggested that the sun and moon

True or False? The Copernican model of the solar system has the planets orbit the sun along elliptical paths.

Galileo's telescopic discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter was important because it showed that

the universe could contain centers of motion other than Earth, and Earth might move along an orbit and not leave the moon behind

A ____ is a single conjecture that can be tested.

A ____ is a system of rules and principles that can be applied to a wide variety of circumstances but may not be universally accepted.

Which of the following was not based on uniform circular motion

the Rudolphine Tables

Halley's Comet has an orbital period of 76 years. What is the average distance of Halley's Comet from the sun?

18 AU

Saturn is on average 10 AU from the sun. What is the approximate orbital period of Saturn?

In pre-Copernican astronomy, it was almost universally believed that

An apparent westward motion of a planet in the sky compared to the background stars (as viewed from the Earth) when observed on successive nights is referred to as

True or False? Galileo wrote the Almagest.

The purpose of using epicycles and deferents to explain the motion of the planets in the night sky was to account for

retrograde motion

Which of the following objects cannot transit (i.e. pass in front of) the Sun as seen from Jupiter?

The greatest inaccuracy in Copernicus' model of the solar system was that the planets

traveled in circular orbits with uniform motion.

According to Aristotle an object with no forces in it will

stop moving eventually.

According to Galileo, the acceleration of a freely falling object due to gravity is ____ the larger the mass of the object.

According to Aristotle, which of the following would be an example of violent motion?

a person pushing a car along the street

Newton concluded that some force had to act on the moon because

a force is needed to pull the moon away from straight-line motion

When two objects of unequal mass orbit each other, the center of mass is

always closer to the more massive of the two objects

Gravity obeys the inverse square law. This statement implies that the gravitational force of one body on another will be ____ apart.

nine times stronger at 2 meters than at 6 meters

Perigee is

the point in an object's orbit around Earth, when the object is closest to Earth

A comet near the sun whose orbit is ____ would never be near the sun again.

hyperbolic

Newtonian physics tells us that Kepler's second law

is a result of the conservation of angular momentum

The circular velocity of a satellite orbiting Earth is given by . In this equation

M represents the mass of Earth and r the radius of the satellite's orbit. 

The diagram below illustrates the orbit of a satellite around Earth. Which letter indicates the location of perigee?
[image]

A(n) ____ orbit is one where the orbiting object is always above the same location on Earth's surface

geosynchronous

The apogee of a(n) ____ orbit does not exist

parabolic

Which of the following is not an example of conservation of angular momentum?

A basketball that spins slower and slower as it spins on your finger.

The radius of Earth is 6378 km. The force of gravity on a 1 kg ball at Earth's surface is 9.8 kg m s^-2. What is the force of gravity on this same ball when the ball is located 12,756 km from Earth's center?

2.45 kg m s²

If the orbital velocity of the moon is 1.0 km/s, what is the orbital velocity of a satellite that is 1/16th as far from Earth as the moon? Hint: There is a long way and a short way to do this calculation.
     G = 6.67´10^-11 N m² kg^-2 and 

What is the escape velocity from the moon for a lunar landing module sitting on the moon's surface? Hints: V_e= square root of (2GM/r); the mass of the moon is 7.2´10²² kg; its radius is 1.738x10⁶ m; G = 6.67´10^-11 N m² kg^-2

What is the circular velocity of an object orbiting Earth at a distance of 1.0x10⁸ m from Earth's center?
     G = 6.67´10^-11 N m² kg^-2

Tides occur because the gravitational force of the moon on the Earth ____ with increasing distance from the moon.

Spring tides occur

at new moon and full moon

According to the theory of general relativity, gravity is caused by

the curvature of space-time

One of the first tests of the general theory of relativity was

the determination of the rate of advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit.

Due to the curvature of space-time by the sun, light from stars that passes near the edge of the sun will 

[image]

be bent so that the stars appear further from the edge of the sun than if space-time was not curved.

The second postulate of special relativity states that

the speed of light is constant and will be the same for all observers independent of their motion relative to the light source.

How much energy is released if 2 kg of matter is converted into pure energy? Hint: E = mc² and c = 3.0´10⁸ m/sec

1.8´10¹⁷ joules

If the mass of the Earth decreased by a factor of two with no change in radius, your weight would

decrease by a factor of 2

The force due to gravity between two objects depends on

Since gravity behaves as an inverse square relation the force due to gravity between two masses

will decrease as the square of the distance between the two masses increases

Which type of curve would accurately represent a closed orbit

How often do spring tides occur?

Granulation is caused by

rising gas below the photosphere.

In some regions of the corona, the magnetic field does not loop back to the sun, and the gas escapes unimpeded. These regions are called ____ and are believed to be the source of the solar wind.

coronal holes

Most of the light we see coming from the sun originates in the

Modern astronomers suspect the corona is heated by

True or False? Most of the visible light from the sun originates in the photosphere.

The diagram below shows a plot of the temperature of the sun as a function of distance above the bottom of the photosphere. At what distance above the bottom of the photosphere does the temperature of the sun change the most rapidly with distance?

[image]

2,300 km

The corona of the sun can be observed

with a coronagraph.

Most of the energy emitted by the sun is generated in the

core

Fusion is promoted in the core of the sun by the ____ there

high temperature and high density

Neutrinos are created in reaction in the ____ of the sun

core

Sunspots are known to be magnetic phenomena because

the Zeeman Effect is observed in sunspots

Sunspots are dark because

the strong magnetic field inhibits the currents of hot gas rising from below

The solar constant is a measure of

the amount of solar energy reaching the earth

The sunspot cycle affects

The sun's magnetic field is evident in the looped shapes of

solar prominences

True or False? There is only one form of neutrino

What evidence supports the contention that other sun-like stars also show a spot cycle much like our sun's sunspot cycle?

the variation in the total brightness of sun-like stars 

The most recent sunspot maximum occurred in 2001. When is the next sunspot maximum expected if the solar cycle continues?

The variation in the strength of the calcium H and K emission from sun-like stars implies that these stars

probably have a magnetic cycle similar to the sun's

A ____ is believed to occur when energy, stored in a twist in the solar magnetic field above a sunspot, is suddenly released

solar flare

The United States consumes 2.5´10¹⁹ J of energy each year. A typical solar flare releases 5.0´10²⁴ J of energy. How many years could we run the United States on the energy released by this solar flare if all of the released energy could be used?

What is the explanation for the pattern of granulation seen on the visible surface of the Sun?

The granules are the tops of hot gas that have risen from the Sun's convective zone

True or False? The element most abundant in the Sun is oxygen.

The gas motions within granules on the solar surface are

upward in the bright cell centers and downward around the darker edges

What are the three layers of the Sun's atmosphere, in order of increasing distance from the surface?

Photosphere, chromosphere, corona

The rotation of the Sun is

fastest at the equator, slower at mid-latitudes, and slowest near the poles

Why is the temperature at the region of a sunspot cooler than the photosphere?

Powerful magnetic fields inhibit the convective flow of the gases of the photosphere allowing them to cool for longer than would normally be permitted

A filtergram is a photograph of the sun's surface made

with only those photons emitted in a specific spectral line

____ occur(s) because photons we receive from the edge of the solar disk are emitted further from the base of the photosphere than the photons we receive from the center of the solar disk

Limb darkening