Honors Astronomy Semester 2 Final – Flashcards
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What is interesting about Jupiter's rotation period?
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Fastest in the solar system
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Essentially, the Great Red Spot is
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A large cyclonic system (hurricane)
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Alternating zones of rising & sinking gas in Jupiter's atmosphere create
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Light & dark bands
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What is thought to lie at the center of Jupiter?
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A massive core of rocky materials w/some iron
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Which of the Galilean moons is the densest & most geologically active?
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Io
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The surface of which Jovian moon most resembles the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean?
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Europa
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Of the Galilean moons, the one w/striking grooved terrain & icy tectonic features as well as older craters is:
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Ganymede
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Which of the Jovian moons is the largest & also the largest moon in the solar system, even larger than Mercury?
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Ganymede
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What are Saturn's rings?
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Small icy particles moving in orbit around Saturn
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The Roche limit is the point of which
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The external tidal forces on an object becomes greater than the internal forces that hold it together
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How many large moons does Saturn have?
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1
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How many medium sized moons does Saturn have?
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6
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What is interesting about Saturn's large moon Titan?
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Has an atmosphere
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The only spacecraft to have visited Uranus & Neptune was
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Voyager 2
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Uranus was discovered
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Less than 250 yrs ago
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Which 3 played a role in finding Neptune?
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Adams, Leverrier, & Galle
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Uranus is
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Barely visible with the naked eye
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In terms of axial tilt, which of the Jovian shows the largest inclination?
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Uranus
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At which plant can the pole remain in darkness for 42 years then have 42 yrs of constant daylight?
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Uranus
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The orbits of most asteroids
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Lie entirely beyond the orbit of Mars
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What is the typical size of most known asteroids
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A few km
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What are dactyl, Gaspra, Mathilde, Eros, & Ida?
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The only 4 asteroids explored by spacecraft to date
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The orbits of most comets
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Lie almost entirely beyond the orbit of Neptune
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What are comets made of?
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Silicates & rocky dust, metallic dust particles, dark complex hydrocarbons, methane, water ice, & ammonia
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The Oort Cloud is thought to be
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The spherical cloud of comets & some larger icy bodies surrounding the outer solar system
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The Kiuper belt objects have orbits that
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Stay out just beyond Neptune & close to the ecliptic
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The largest Kiuper belt object is
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Eris
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The Perseid meteor shower gives us about a meteor every minute in mid
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August
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Few _______ actually Strike the earth, b/c most are small & burn up in the atmosphere
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Meteors
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Most meteor showers occur________, as we again intersect the comet's orbit
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Biannually
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How do the atmospheres of the moon and mercury compare?
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Neither has a permanent atmosphere
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Lunar Maria are found
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Almost entirely on the earth side, where the crust was thinner
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Lunar highlands are
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More rugged, easily cratered, & older than the lunar mare
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What is true of the Moon's orbital & rotational periods?
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They are =
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Mercury's surface most resembles that of which other body
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Moon
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Mercury's Caloris Basin is aptly names, since
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It is the hottest region, Turing to face the sun when mercury is @ perihelion
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Venus's rotation
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Takes longer than its orbit around the sun
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Through radar observations, it was found that Venus'
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Rotation on its axis is retrograde
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Which statement is true of Venus's surface?
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2 continent sized uplands
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What is Aphrodite Terra
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Continental sized plateau on Venus
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Maxwell mons
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Huge shield volcano on Venus
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What is the main problem spacecraft have encountered in landing on Venus?
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Extremely high temperatures
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Why does Mars appear fairer than Venus as seen from earth
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It is smaller, farther away, and less reflective
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Give the correct size order of Venus, mercury, and Mars from smallest to largest
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Mercury, mars, Venus
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How long is a day on Mars?
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24 hrs, 36 min
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Where do the names for the moons of mars come from
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The sons of Ares and Aphrodite
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Most prominent feature of Mars observable from earth
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Bright polar caps
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Deepest depression found on surface of Mars
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Hellas Basin
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Largest shield volcano yet discovered
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Olympus mons on Mars
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NASA missions that landed on Mars in 1976
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Vikings 1 &2
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That's is bulge on Mars is roughly the size of
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North America
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What is thought to be the reason that there are no small impact craters on Mars?
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Wind blows small dust particles, eroding the surface of Mars, erasing small impact craters faster than they form
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Why is Mars red?
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Iron in the surface rocks have been oxidized over time
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How many moons does Mars have?
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2
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How many earths could fit inside the sun?
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A little over a million
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About heat percent of the incoming energy from the sun reaches earth's surface?
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50-70%
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From inside out what is the correct order for the structure of the sun?
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Radiative zone, convective zone, the chromosphere
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Hydrostatic equilibrium in our sun is the balance between
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Gravitation and pressure
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A loop of gas following the magnetic field lines between sunspots' poles is
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A prominence
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How long does the sunspot cycle last on average?
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About 11 yrs
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Sunspots
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Come in pairs, representing the north and south magnetic fields
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If a star appears to move back and forth relative to other stars over a 6 mo period, this motion is
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Parallax shift
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What is the absolute magnitude of our sun?
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+4.8
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The star's color index is a quick way of determining its
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Luminosity
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The Hertzsprung-Russel Diagram plots ______ again the spectral type or temp
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Luminosity or absolute magnitude
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A hypernova creates a
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Blackhole
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What are the 2 main points of Einstein's general theory of relativity
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Speed of light is constant everywhere Spacetime is the 4th dimension
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If light from a distant star passes close to a massive body, the light beam will
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Bend toward the star due to gravity
