Chapter 4 – Space Answers – Flashcards
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Which number indicates the location of the sun at sunset on December 21st for an observer at latitude 48° S?
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1Â
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The Caracol located in the Yucatan
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contains widows that are aligned to rising points of Venus along the horizon.
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The primary alignment in the Big Horn Medicine Wheel is an alignment of two stone cairns with
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the summer solstice sunrise point.
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According to Aristotle, which of the following would be an example of violent motion?
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a person pushing a car along the street
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____ 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
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Hipparchus
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Ptolemy's model of the universe
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contained epicycles.
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The purpose of using epicycles and deferents to explain the motion of the planets in the night sky was to account for
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retrograde motion.
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A(n) ____ is a circle whose center is located on the circumference of another circle
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epicycle
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Which of the following people did not accept a heliocentric model of the universe?
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Tycho
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Which of these were things ancient Greek astronomers never even considered in astronomy?
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Wrong! They considered the possibility of all the above.
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The Almagest
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is a collection of the science and mathematics of the Greeks. CHECK
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The book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (On the revolution of the heavenly spheres)
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first described the Copernican theory.
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Which of the following people was a Polish cleric (church official)?
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Nicholas Copernicus
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The Copernican system was no more accurate than the Ptolemaic system in predicting the positions of the planets because
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the Copernican system included uniform circular motion.
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Which of the following statements best describes Nicholas Copernicus' model of the solar system?
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Heliocentric. The Earth is a planet orbiting the sun along a perfectly circular orbit just like all of the other planets.
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Which of the following was viewed by Copernicus's contemporaries as a clear advantage of the Copernican system?
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It gave a simpler explanation of retrograde motion than did Ptolemy's system
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Which of the following people was a Danish nobleman with his own island observatory?
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Tycho Brahe
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In what way was Nicholas Copernicus' solar system the same as Ptolemy's?
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In both systems all orbits were perfect circles
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In pre-Copernican astronomy, it was almost universally believed that
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the Earth was at the center of the universe.
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Brahe's universe was the same as the Copernican universe except that
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Earth did not move.
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Tycho Brahe's greatest contribution to astronomy was
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his years of careful observations of the planets.
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Which of the following is a true statement about Tycho Brahe's contribution to astronomy?
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he determined the positions of stars and planets with the greatest accuracy ever achieved up to that time
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Which of the following statements is true about Tycho's observations of the "new star" (nova)
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He found that the nova did not exhibit parallax, and, therefore, it must be farther away than the moon.
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Which of the following statements best describes Tycho Brahe's compromise model of the solar system?
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The Earth is stationary and in the center of the solar system. However, all of the planets (Earth excluded) orbit the sun. Then the sun, along with its companion planets, orbits the Earth along a perfectly circular orbit.
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Which of the following people was an Italian professor of mathematics?
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Galileo Galilei
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Galileo's observations of the gibbous phase of Venus proved
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that Venus orbits the sun
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Galileo's telescopic discoveries of mountains on the moon and spots on the sun were controversial because they suggested that the sun and moon
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are not perfect.
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Galileo's telescopic discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter was important because it showed that
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a and b above
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Galileo found that
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heavy and light objects fall at the same rate.
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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
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retrograde motion
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Which of the following objects cannot transit (i.e. pass in front of) the Sun as seen from Jupiter?
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Saturn
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When Mars is located directly behind the Earth with respect to the Sun in its orbit, it is
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at the midpoint in the sky between east and west at midnight.
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Which of the following planets can be seen as a crescent phase from Earth?
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Both a and b; Mercury and Venus
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Which of the following people was a German mathematics teacher?
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Johannes Kepler
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Which of the following statements best describes Johannes Kepler's model of the solar system?
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The sun is the center of the solar system. The Earth is a planet orbiting the sun along an elliptical orbit just like all of the other planets
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Which of the following best summarizes Kepler's first law?
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All planets move around the sun along elliptical orbits. The sun is at the one of the foci of the ellipse.
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Which of the following best summarizes Kepler's second law?
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Planets move faster when they are close to the sun than when they are far away.
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Which of the following best summarizes Kepler's third law?
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The time it takes for a planet to complete one orbit around the sun is related to the distance of that planet from the sun.
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Which of the following was not based on uniform circular motion?
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the Rudolphine Tables
