question

If the moon is a full moon tonight, will the moon be waxing or waning one week later? Which side of the moon (right or left) will appear illuminated at this time

answer

Waning, LEFT

question

Where would you see the full moon when it starts to rise? What time would this happen?

answer

Eastern horizon, rises at 6 pm

question

Where would you see the sun when the full moon starts to rise?

answer

Western

question

Where would you see the new moon, if it were visible, when it starts to rise?

answer

Eastern horizon, starts at 6 am

question

New moons are completely______from earths surface

answer

visible

question

If it is 12 noon what moon phase would the earth observer see?

answer

Waxing gibous

question

At what time would you look to see a first-quarter moon at its highest position in the sky?

answer

6 pm

question

If the sun set below your western horizon about 2 hours ago, and the moon is barely visible on the eastern horizon, what phase would the moon be in at this time and location?

answer

Waxing gibous

question

Thin silver moon visible early morning just before sunrise. Which phase of the moon would this be, and in what direction would you look to see the moon?

answer

waning crescent, western horizon

question

Keplars 3rd law states

answer

the mass of a planet does not affect its orbital speed

question

Earths rotation speed ____ AU

answer

1

question

In the electromagnetic spectrum of light, which one has the longest wavelength?

answer

radio waves

question

In the electromagnetic spectrum of light, which one has the longest frequency?

answer

gamma rays

question

In the electromagnetic spectrum which light travels fastest?

answer

all travel the same speed

question

Which electromagnetic light has the greatest energy?

answer

gamma rays

question

High frequencies of light means _____ energy and ______ wavelengths.

answer

high, longest

question

Red light has the ______ energy and frequency and the _______ wavelength.

answer

lowest, longest

question

Blue light has the ______ energy and frequency and the _______ wavelength.

answer

highest, shortest

question

Infrared light has _____ energy than ultraviolet.

answer

lower

question

x ray photons have _____ wavelengths than gamma ray photons

answer

longer

question

visible electromagnetic radiation has a _____ frequency than radio wave electromagnetic radiation.

answer

higher

question

Energy levels are related to ______

answer

wavelength frequency

question

What rays completely penetrate the earths atmosphere?

answer

visible & radio

question

What rays partially penetrate earths atmosphere and reach the surface?

answer

UV & infrared by mountain-top observations

question

What rays are completely absorbed by the earths atmosphere?

answer

gamma & X-ray

question

Our complete cosmic address is

answer

Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster.

question

How fast does light travel?

answer

From Earth to the Moon in 1.25 seconds.

question

From Earth to the Moon in 1.25 seconds.

answer

about four years.

question

Which of the following are in order from smallest to largest?

answer

Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster

question

Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster

answer

8 hours.

question

Which of the following objects are not found inside our Solar System?

answer

the Milky Way galaxy

question

A light-year is the

answer

distance light travels in a year.

question

How do we test scientific knowledge?

answer

We try to prove it wrong.

question

The Cosmological Principle is the

answer

proposition that natural laws should behave the same everywhere in the Universe.

question

Scientific knowledge is reliable because

answer

predictions are tested with experiments and observations.

question

Occam's razor is a guiding principle that states that

answer

when two hypotheses explain a phenomenon well, the one with the fewest assumptions is most likely correct.

question

The ultimate tester of the correctness of scientific knowledge is

answer

nature

question

When using the scientific method, a hypothesis that would explain a particular observation

answer

must be able to be tested.

question

A scientific theory is

answer

A model explaining something that is backed by a large body of evidence and hasn't failed a single test.

question

How is an idea different from a hypothesis?

answer

An idea can be anything, but a hypothesis is specifically an idea that leads to testable predictions.

question

Which of the following would make an idea falsifiable?

answer

Tests can be designed that would show whether or not predictions made by the idea are correct.

question

The correct order of steps in the scientific method after making an observation is to

answer

suggest a hypothesis, make a prediction, perform a test.

question

If a test of the prediction of a hypothesis supports that hypothesis, the next step in the scientific method is to

answer

make and test more predictions of that hypothesis.

question

384,000,000

answer

3.84 x 10^8.

question

what is not a unit of length?

answer

kilogram

question

1 x 10^-9 meters is a

answer

nanometer

question

A fingernail is closest in length to

answer

1 cm.

question

There are 3.3 feet/meter. About how many meters are in 36 feet?

answer

11

question

1 m/s into km/hr.

answer

1000

question

A crescent phase of the Moon can be seen at midnight if the Moon is

answer

This situation is impossible; you cannot view this phase at this time.

question

A lunar eclipse is possible

answer

only when a full Moon's orbit intersects Earth's orbital plane around the Sun.

question

A partial solar eclipse occurs when

answer

only part of the Sun's disk is covered by the Moon from the vantage point of an observer on Earth.

question

A sky observer in the Southern Hemisphere would

answer

see stars moving clockwise around the south celestial pole.

question

A solar eclipse is possible

answer

only when a new Moon's orbit intersects Earth's orbital plane around the Sun.

question

Compared to the winter, in the summer:

answer

the Sun is higher in the sky at noon.

question

From the equator, stars at night will seem to

answer

rise in the east, move overhead, and then set in the west.

question

From the perspective of a viewer in the Northern Hemisphere, which of the following is always true?

answer

The north celestial pole is never somewhere overhead.

question

If Earth's axis were tilted twice as much as it currently is, we would experience

answer

more extreme seasons.

question

If it is 6:00 pm where you live and you see a full Moon, it is

answer

"rising" from the eastern horizon.

question

If the Sun is directly in front of the zodiacal constellation Gemini right now at noon, how long would you have to wait to be able to see Gemini highest in the sky (on the meridian) at midnight?

answer

6 months

question

Objects that are located on the celestial equator will be visible for only

answer

12 hours per day

question

The further north a star is, the _____ it stays up. Circumpolar stars that are near the north celestial pole _____ set

answer

longer, never

question

In reality, the Celestial Sphere is

answer

an imaginary surface on which distant objects appear to lie, which rotates because Earth is spinning on its axis.

question

In six months, you will be able to see a different set of stars in the night sky because

answer

Earth will move.

question

Is there any location on Earth where the entire sky is potentially visible within a 24-hour period (ignoring the fact that some stars can't be seen if it is daytime)?

answer

at the equator

question

On the celestial sphere, the equinoxes are

answer

where the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator.

question

Residents of the Southern Hemisphere cannot see the stars around the north celestial pole because

answer

Earth itself is in the way.

question

The Moon is in synchronous rotation with Earth because

answer

the Moon rotates on its axis once per revolution around Earth.

question

The Sun is directly overhead (at the zenith) at noon

answer

only twice a year at locations within the Tropics.

question

The precession of the equinoxes is due to the

answer

wobble of Earth as it spins on its axis.

question

The tilt of Earth's axis causes seasons by changing the

answer

inclination of sunlight upon your location on Earth as the year progresses.

question

What causes the Moon to go through phases?

answer

The relative positions of the Moon, Sun, and Earth as the Moon orbits Earth.

question

When the Moon is in a quarter phase, the

answer

line connecting the Sun and Earth is at a right angle (90°) to the line connecting the Earth and the Moon.

question

When the moon appears more than half lit, and is becoming more lit every day, which phase is it in?

answer

waxing gibbous

question

A line running from due north to due south through a point directly overhead is called

answer

the meridian.

question

When the Sun crosses the meridian at your location on Earth, it is

answer

local noon.

question

Which of the following terms describes the event in which the Moon is directly centered over the disk of the Sun from the vantage point of Earth but is relatively far away from Earth in its orbit, so it is not large enough in our sky to cover the entire Sun?

answer

an annular solar eclipse

question

A measurement of an object's inertia is made via its

answer

mass.

question

According to Newton's first law, a space probe traveling through interplanetary space will

answer

maintain its motion without any outside force.

question

An asteroid has an average distance from the Sun of 3 AU. How long does it take to orbit once around the Sun?

answer

5 years

question

An ellipse has no more than

answer

two foci.

question

Apparent retrograde motion in our sky

answer

occurs when a planet appears to move temporarily "backward" in our sky.

question

Astronauts in orbit around Earth feel weightless because

answer

they are falling around Earth.

question

If a satellite is orbiting Earth at constant speed,

answer

its orbit is circular.

question

If the velocity of a comet at its closest approach to the Sun is more than its escape velocity, its orbit around the Sun will be

answer

unbound.

question

Kepler's second law, the law of equal areas, states that

answer

a planet moves its fastest when closest to the Sun.

question

Sandy, a space shuttle astronaut, pushes on a bowling ball twice as hard as Doug, another space shuttle astronaut.

answer

The acceleration of the ball that Sandy causes is twice as great as Doug's acceleration.

question

The driver of a car who suddenly brakes for a stoplight is

answer

undergoing acceleration because the car is slowing down.

question

The speedometer of a car reads 30 mph (miles per hour). One minute later it reads 40 mph. Which of the following is true?

answer

The speedometer is giving the car's speed at each moment, and the car is accelerating.

question

The time it takes a planet to make one complete orbit increases with the

answer

increased distance from the Sun.

question

What will be the acceleration of a 40-kilogram object that is pushed with a net force of 80 newtons?

answer

2 m/s2

question

When we say that a satellite is orbiting a planet, we mean that the satellite

answer

is falling freely around the planet.

question

Which of the following objects is accelerating?

answer

a ball moving at a constant rate around a circular hoop

question

Centripetal force is

answer

a force that always points toward the center of a circle.

question

Copernicus is famous for reviving the ancient Greek idea

answer

that Earth orbits the Sun.

question

Galileo observed that Venus had phases, with the full phase occurring when Venus appeared smaller. This implied that

answer

the heliocentric model of the Solar System was correct.

question

Galileo's work on the motion of an object was significant because

answer

he conducted experiments with moving objects to verify his rules of motion.

question

In the geocentric model,

answer

the Sun, planets, and stars orbit Earth.

question

Newton's first law states:

answer

An object in motion tends to stay in motion in the same direction until an unbalanced force acts upon it.

question

The "escape velocity" refers to the

answer

lowest velocity required for an object to assume a path from which it never returns.

question

The first observational evidence that some objects in the sky did not orbit Earth was

answer

Galileo's discovery that Jupiter's moons were near the planet.

question

Two objects of different weights are dropped simultaneously from the same height and land at the same time. This is because

answer

they both have the same gravitational acceleration.

question

What makes Kepler's laws empirical, but not Newton's laws?

answer

Kepler's laws describe how things move based solely on observations, while Newton's laws give an underlying physical explanation for this motion.

question

Which of the following is a type of force? motion, energy, weight, mass, motion

answer

weight

question

In order to improve the resolution of a telescope, we can

answer

make its aperture larger.

question

In what part of the electromagnetic spectrum is light with a wavelength of 500 nm?

answer

visible

question

Light can be generally described as

answer

an electromagnetic wave that causes charged particles to vibrate.

question

Radio telescopes suffer from poor resolution because

answer

radio waves have such a large wavelength compared to the diameter of the telescope.

question

Refraction can be described as

answer

light bending as it passes through a different medium.

question

The energy of a photon depends on its

answer

wavelength.

question

The fact that light is quantized means that it can be thought of as

answer

a particle.

question

The frequency of a wave is defined as the

answer

number of wave crests passing a point in space each second.

question

Which of the following photons of electromagnetic radiation carry the highest energy?

answer

gamma rays

question

Which of these ranges of electromagnetic radiation has the longest wavelengths?

answer

radio waves

question

Which of these ranges of electromagnetic radiation has the shortest wavelengths?

answer

X-rays

question

Adaptive optics is a technique used to correct telescope images for

answer

atmospheric distortion.

question

An interferometer is

answer

two or more telescopes acting as one instrument.

question

Angular resolution is

answer

how close two objects can be together before they are viewed as one object.

question

Astronomical seeing is due to

answer

the turbulent distortions of Earth's atmosphere.

question

It is advantageous for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to be in space while it observes astronomical objects in optical light

answer

to avoid the distortion effects of Earth's atmosphere.

question

Light is a means of transporting

answer

energy.

question

Reflecting telescopes can be larger than refracting telescopes because

answer

mirrors can be supported from the back but lenses must be supported from the sides.

question

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is in space

answer

because the type of light it observes is not visible from the ground.

question

The resolution achievable by an unaided human eye is

answer

1 arcminute.

question

We get most of our knowledge about our universe

answer

through telescope observations of light from astronomical objects.

question

What effect does high atmospheric seeing have on astronomical images?

answer

It makes them more blurry.

question

What is a major disadvantage of refractors?

answer

The lens is subject to chromatic aberration.

question

Which of the following is true?

answer

The integration time of a photographic plate or CCD can be much longer than that of the human eye.

question

In the electromagnetic spectrum which light travels fastest?

answer

all travel the same speed

ASTRONOMY 180 CH 1-4 EXAM – Flashcards

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