Quiz 1 Astronomy – Flashcards
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Suppose we imagine the Sun to be about the size of a grapefruit. How bug an area would the orbits of the nine planets of the Solar System cover?
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The size of a typical campus
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What is Nuclear Fusion?
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The process of combining lightweight nuclei to make heavier nuclei
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On the cosmic calendar, in which the history of the universe is compressed into 1 year, when did Kepler and Galileo first discover that we live on a planet in the solar system?
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1 second ago
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On a scale in which the distance from the Sun to Earth is about 15 meters, the distance from Earth to the Moon is
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Small enough to fit within your hand
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A typical galaxy is a
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Collection of a few hundred million to a trillion or more stars, bound together by gravity.
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Our solar system consists of
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the Sun and all the objects that orbit it
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How long does it take Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun?
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One year
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The term observable universe refers to
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That portion of the universe that we can see in principle, given the finite ago of the universe.
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How are galaxies important to our existence?
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Galaxies recycle material from one generation of stars to the next, and without this recycling we could not exist.
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Which is the largest planet in our solar system?
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Jupiter
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Why were ancient peoples unable to detect stellar parallax?
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They did not have the ability to measure very small angles.
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If the Moon is setting at 6 A.M., the phase of the Moon must be
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Full.
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Orion is visible on winter evenings but not summer evenings because of
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The location of Earth in its orbit.
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During a planet's period of apparent retrograde motion (as seen from earth),
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For a few weeks or months, the planet moves westward relative to the stars, rather than the usual eastward relative to the stars.
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We describe a location on Earth's surface by stating its
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Latitude and longitude.
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What do we mean when we talk about the "Milky Way" in our sky?
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We mean the patchy band of light that represents what we see when we look into the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy.
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Which of the following best describes why we have seasons on Earth?
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The tilt of Earth's axis causes different portions of Earth to receive more or less direct sunlight at different times of the year.
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How does Earth's varying distance from the Sun affect our seasons?
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It doesn't - Earth's orbital distance plays no obvious role in seasons.
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All of the following statements are true. Which one explains the reason that there is not a solar eclipse at every new moon?
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The orbital plane of the moon is tilted slightly (by about 5 degrees) to the ecliptic plane.
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Why is it warmer in the summer than in the winter?
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Light from the sun is concentrated over a smaller area since it is higher in the sky.
