Astronomy Final Exam

Shoemaker-Levy 9

The comet that broke into more than 20 pieces and then collided with Jupiter in 1994 was

corona

Which part of the Sun’s atmosphere has the lowest density (number of atoms per unit volume)?

the south pole was brightly lit, with the Sun shining down on it

At the moment when the Voyager spacecraft got closest to Uranus, the Sun was shining directly on the planet’s south pole. Uranus takes about 17 hours to rotate once on its axis. If Voyager took a photo of the south pole 8.5 hours later, what would it observe?

Voyager

Much of what we have learned about the jovian planets and their satellites has come from the work of two spacecraft called:

two protons

The process of fusion that keeps our Sun shining begins with which building blocks?

compositions

Different asteroids reflect different percentages of the light falling on them. This is due to the fact that they have different:

the Sun’s “wind” of particles is chipping atoms off the surface of Mercury

Mercury is a small planet and therefore has trouble holding on to an atmosphere. How then do scientist account for the extremely thin atmosphere that was found around the planet in 1985?

Mercury

Which of the following is made of the densest material?

the plane of the orbit of pluto

Which of the following pieces of observational evidence does our modern “solar nebula” theory of the formation of the solar system NOT explain directly?

for hydrogen nuclei to fuse, they must get very close to each other, which the nuclei in the oceans cannot do

If the “fuel” for nuclear fusion is nuclei of hydrogen, and the Earth’s oceans are filled with hydrogen atoms in water all being jostled together, why isn’t there a lot of fusion happening in our oceans?

Images from orbiting spacecraft reveal ancient channels that look like dried-up river beds on Earth (and our rovers show geological formations made by running water)

What makes astronomers believe that Mars once had rivers and running water?

a little bit of mass is lost in each fusion reaction and is turned into energy (the Sun is losing mass)

Who pays the bill for the energy generated by nuclear fusion in the Sun? In other words, where does the energy pouring out of the Sun come from ultimately?

it has a thick layer of clouds containing sulfuric acid droplets

Which of the following statements about the planet Venus is true?

Ida and Gaspra

The two asteroids from which close-up images and data have been returned by the Galileo spacecraft are:

Venera

The spacecraft that soft-landed successfully on the surface of Venus (and briefly sent back pictures while sitting in that destructive environment) were called

the long scarps or cliffs

What formation or formations are evidence that the planet Mercury may have shrunk (gotten a bit smaller) as it cooled?

a resonance

When two objects in orbit have periods of revolution that are simple ratios of each other (such as 1 to 2 or 1 to 3) we say that we have:

the Sun’s magnetic field interacting with the charged particles that make up the atmosphere

What mechanisms do astronomers believe is responsible for making the Sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than its photosphere?

coronal holes

The ten million tons of particles that escape the Sun each year in the form of the solar wind get out mainly through regions called

lowland lava plains

About 75% of the surface of Venus consists of

Galileo

The first spacecraft which did not merely fly by a jovian (or giant) planet, but actually went into orbit around it for an extended period of time was

loops of magnetic field emerging from the surface of the Sun

Astronomers now realize that active regions on the Sun are connected with

Titan is so cold that carbon dioxide and water vapor freeze out

The atmosphere of Venus is mostly carbon dioxide, and the atmosphere of the Earth has water vapor. Why are these two gases absent in the atmosphere of the satellite around Saturn called Titan?

ancient impact craters in which lava beds welled up from inside the Moon

We believe the maria on the Earth’s Moon are:

the gravity of the comet nucleus holds on to the evaporated material, and it all eventually freezes back into the nucleus

Comets change as they approach the Sun in their orbits. Which of the following statements about a comet approaching the Sun is FALSE?

Kepler

The telescope in space that allowed astronomers to find thousands of exoplanets and exoplanet candidates by making very careful measurements during a planet transit was called:

ceres

The first asteroid to be discovered (which is also the largest one) is called

Viking 1

The first spacecraft to orbit another planet circled Mars in 1971. It was:

they measure the Zeeman effect

How do astronomers know how strong the magnetic field of the Sun is?

third quarter

You and some friends decide (during a wild party held at the time of the Full Moon) that you cannot live without having the secret recipe for the veggie burger they serve in the college cafeteria. So you decide to plan a break-in to steal the recipe from the chef’s office. So that you don’t get caught, you want to carry out your plan when there is no moonlight in the evening. What is the next phase of the Moon with no evening moonlight (i.e. when the Moon rises roughly at midnight or later)?

Mariner 10

The spacecraft that really gave scientists their first good close-up look of the planet Mercury was:

the pulsations these experiments measure take about an hour to emerge from the Sun’s interior

Which of the following statements about helioseismology experiments is FALSE:

study the oscillations (pulsations) of the Sun’s surface

Which of the following is a way for astronomers to learn more about the interior of the Sun?

granulations

Which of the following is not part of some active regions on the Sun?

Percival Lowell’s discovery of an entire network of artificial canals built by martians

The observation that began the 19th and early 20th century fascination with Mars as a place for life was:

Clyde Tombaugh

Pluto was discovered through the patient searching of

Viking

There was a pair of spacecraft whose components both orbited the planet Mars and landed on its surface in 1976. These spacecraft were called:

nuclear fusion in the core keeps the temperature and the pressure inside the Sun at a high enough level so that gravity is balanced

The Sun is an enormous ball of gas. Left to itself, a ball of so many atoms should collapse under its own tremendous gravity. Why is our Sun not collapsing?

Neptune

The jovian planet that has the longest year (period of revolution) is:

maria

The large, roughly circular, dark, and somewhat younger regions on the Moon are called:

a slow contraction

Physicists Kelvin and Helmholtz in the last century proposed that the source of the Sun’s energy could be:

The Sun rotates at different rates at different latitudes on the Sun

Which statement about the Sun’s rotation is TRUE?

a total lunar eclipse is visible over a much larger part of the Earth’s surface than a total solar eclipse

From a particular location on Earth, why can we see many more total eclipses of the Moon than total eclipses of the Sun?

spring tides

When the Sun and Moon are lined up and pull together, the tides they raise are called:

small moons orbiting in the same direction that their planet turns

The majority of the moons orbiting the outer (jovian) planets are: