as101

Which of the following is largest? A) Size of a typical galaxy B) 1 Astronomical unit C) Distance to the nearest star (other than our sun) D) 1 light year E) size of Pluto's orbit

Size of a typical galaxy

On the Cosmic Calendar about when did the solar system begin to form?

Sometime around Labour Day - September 1

Which of the following statements does not use the term light year in an appropriate way?

It will take me light-years to complete this homework assignment.

On the Cosmic Calendar (where the age of the universe in condensed into the equivalent to one calendar year) most of recorded history takes up what portion of the "year"?

the last few seconds of the year

Which of the following is furthest from the Sun? A) a comet in the Kuiper belt B) an asteroid in the asteroid belt C) a comet in the Oort cloud D) Pluto E) Neptune

a comet in the Oort cloud

What is an Astronomical Unit (AU)? a) 1.5 x 108 kilometres (km). b) 1.5 x 1011 metres c) 150 million kilometres d) The average distance between the Sun and the Earth. e) All of the above

All of the above

Which of the following best describes the Milky Way Galaxy?

A spiral galaxy with a disk about 80,000 light-years in diameter and containing between 100 billion and 1 trillion stars

Which of the following statements about the sizes of stars is most true?

Rigel, the bluish star representing the left foot of Orion, is considerably larger than the Sun

The nearest star to the Sun (and us) is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf in the Alpha Centauri system. How far away from the Sun is Proxima Centauri?

4.2 light years

Which of the following is closest to the Sun? a) Mercury b) Earth c) Saturn d) Pluto e) A comet in the Oort Cloud

Mercury

What is light year?

The distance light travels in one year

On the Cosmic Calendar when did the big bang occur?

January 1

The order of the planets beyond Earth, away from the Sun, is

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

Which of the following statements about sidereal and solar days is not true?

The time it takes for the Moon to make one circuit of our sky is one solar day.

Which of the following correctly describes the meridian in your sky?

a half-circle extending from your horizon due north, through your zenith, to your

Which of the following statements about the ecliptic plane is not true?

It is the plane of the Moon's orbit around the Earth.

What makes the North Star, Polaris, special?

It appears very near the north celestial pole.

Which of the following statements about the Celestial Sphere is not true.

The Celestial Equator lies in the Ecliptic Plane

The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun moving how?

eastward among the stars

What is the ecliptic?

The Sun's apparent path along the celestial sphere

You are standing on the Earth's equator at midnight. Which way is Polaris, the North star?

on the northern horizon

Suppose you live on the Moon. How long is a day (i.e., from sunrise to sunrise)?

a lunar month

Which of the following statements about the Moon is true?

The Moon's distance from the Earth varies during its orbit.

We can't detect stellar parallax with naked-eye observations. Which of the following would make parallax easier to observe?

increasing the size of the earths orbit

Patterns of stars in constellations hardly change in appearance over times of even a few thousand years. Why?

The stars in our sky actually move rapidly relative to us thousands of kilometres per hour but are so far away that it takes a long time for this motion to make a noticeable change in the patterns in the sky.

Each cycle of the Earth's precession takes about

26,000 years

What happens during the apparent retrograde motion of a planet?

The planet appears to move westward with respect to the stars over a period of many nights.

If the Moon was in its same orbital plane but twice as far from Earth, which of the following would happen?

Total eclipses of the Sun would not happen.

The tilt of the Earth's axis causes the seasons because

the rays of light strike the ground more directly in summer

On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes a) every place on Earth has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness b) the Sun rises due east and sets due west c) the Sun's path is coincident with the celestial equator d) all of A, B and C

all of A, B and C

The number of days in a month is associated with

Lunar Phases

Suppose the date is June 21 and the Sun never sets, just touching your northern horizon at midnight. Where are you?

The Arctic Circle

Right ascension is expressed in

Hours, minutes and seconds from 0 to 24 hours

The problem with the Julian calendar was that it was

Too short by 11 minutes in a year

The calendar we use now is called the

Gregorian after Pope Gregory

Latitude in stellar coordinates is known as

Declination

Day and night are caused by

the rotation of the Earth on its axis

Mars is in opposition with the Earth when it is

Perfectly in line with the Sun and Earth with the Earth between the Sun and Mars.

If you lived at the North Pole at night the stars would

never rise or set but move in circles around Polaris, the North Star.

day?

the combined effect of the rotation of the Earth and its orbit about the Sun

which of the following statements about lunar phases is true?

it is possible to have 2 full moons during January but not during February

which of the following celestial phenomena is the smallest?

the orbit of the moon

Suppose you lived at the Earth's equator. Which of the following statements would not be true?

the celestial equator goes through your sky from due east on your horizon, through 50 degrees altitude in the south, to due west on the horizon

When you observe a star for a period of a few hours, you notice that it moves across the sky. What is responsible for this motion?

Earths rotation on its axis

The order of the planets, from the sun outward is

mercury, Venus, earth, mars, Jupiter, Saturn

One light year is closest to what distance

ten million kilometers

Which of the following is the best reason for the leap years

the combined effect of the rotation of the earth and the precession of the earth's axis

The apparent visual magnitude of star A is +2 and the apparent visual magnitude Of star B is +1. Based on this information which statement below must be true

light output distance cannot be determined from a stars apparent visual magnitude alone

Which of the following would appear brightest in the night sky

The full moon

What conditions are required for a lunar eclipse

the phase of the moon must be full, and the nodes of the moons orbit must be nearly aligned with the earth and the sun

The size of a hockey rink is best measured in what units

meters

If the moon is setting at midnight, the phase of the moon must be

first quarter

What is true?

Both the northern and southern hemispheres receive the same amount of sunlight on the Equinoxes and The northern hemisphere receives the most direct sunlight on the summer solstice

Which of the following best describes the tropic of Cancer

it is a place where the sun is directly overhead at noon on the summer solstice

The sun is rising in the east and will be on your meridian in 2 hours. What time is it currently?

10 am

While in Bracebridge, ON where the latitude is 45 degrees, at the spring equinox (about March 21st) the sun follows the path where it

rises due east, crosses the meridian at an altitude of 45 degrees in the south, and sets due west

What conditions are required for a solar eclipse

the phase of the moon must be new, and the nodes of the moons orbit must be nearly aligned with the earth and the sun

Which of the following is the furthest from the sun?

Proxima Centauri

If it is midnight in waterloo it is

daytime in Sydney, Australia

The lunar month is longer than the sidereal month because

the moon has to complete more than one full orbit around the earth to complete the cycle of lunar phases

Which of the following celestial phenomena is the largest

the milky way galaxy

How long does it take light from the surface of the sun to get to earth?

a few minutes

Which of the following has your address in the correct order? In this question the local group also means thee local Clusters

you, Earth, Solar system, Milky Way, Local Group, Local super cluster

The size of our galaxy in light years is closest to which of the following numbers

100000

Which statement below most accurately describes modern constellations?

there are 88 well-defined regions on the celestial sphere

the solar system consists of

the sun and its planets, asteroids and comets

what is the largest object in the solar system?

The sun

In our journey outward from the Sun, what is a feature you notice about the spacing of the planets.

the inner planets are grouped together relatively close to the sun while the planets from Jupiter to Neptune are spaced much further apart.

Each of the following shows a constellation followed by a bright star. In all cases but one, the star is part of the constellation. Which one is a mismatch?

Canis Minor, Polaris

Which of the following statements about the Moon is false?

The side of the moon we never see from Earth is always in darkness.

On the summer solstice in June, the Sun will be directly above ________ and all locations north of _____________ will experience daylight all day.

The Tropic of Cancer: The Arctic Circle

If you see the Moon rising in the Earth just as the Sun is setting in the west then the phase of the Moon is

Full

Galileo observed that Venus had phases very similar to the phases our Moon goes through. From this he concluded that

Venus must, therefore, orbit the Sun and not Earth.

Which of the following is not one of, nor follows directly from, Kepler's laws?

When a planet travels at slower speeds it must be nearer the Sun and when it speeds up it must be as far from the Sun as it can get.

Suppose you read on a newspaper website that a new planet has been found having an average speed of 33 km/sec. When it's closest to the star it moves at 31 km/sec and when it's farthest it moves at 35 km/sec. Why is this information incorrect?

From Kepler's second law we infer that a planet must move fastest when it's closest, not when it is farthest away.

Which of the following is not part of Newton's universal law of gravitation?

The gravitational attraction between two objects depends directly on the distance between their centres of mass.

Kepler's third law of planetary motion states that

The cube of the semi-major axis of a planet's orbit is directly proportional to the square of its period of motion around the Sun.

Which of the following is not an example of a "pseudoscience"?

Astronomy

The names of the seven days of the week are based on the

seven naked-eye objects that appear to move among the constellations.

The Metonic cycle recognizes what?

The cycle of lunar phases that repeats every 19 years.

Which of the following best describes the origin of ocean tides on Earth?

Tides are caused by the difference in the force of gravity exerted by the Moon across the sphere of the Earth.

Spring tides occur

At any time of the year when the Moon is full.

When Copernicus first created his Sun-centred model of the universe, it did not lead to substantially better predictions of planetary positions than the Ptolemaic model. Why not?

Copernicus used perfect circles for the orbits of the planets.

Galileo was a very important figure in the development of astronomy. Which of the following statements about Galileo's accomplishments is false?

Galileo looked at the Moon through his telescope and observed rivers, mountains and lakes filled with liquid.

Which statement about the Cosmological Principle is valid?

It is based on two tenets involving the universality of the laws of physics and chemistry and the belief that there is nothing special about the Earth.

Galileo observed that Jupiter has moons. From this information you may conclude that

somethings do not orbit Earth.

Which of the following is not regarded as a heat transfer mechanism?

Segregation

A green apple (nor your Mac computer) looks green because

it reflects green light and absorbs all other colors

Which of the following is not a unit of speed?

centimetres/light-year

What is acceleration?

It is the rate of change of velocity with time.

Which of the following statements about orbital motion is not true?

An elliptical orbit is an example of an open orbit.

Which of the following statements correctly describes the law of conservation of energy?

The total quantity of energy in the universe never changes.

Which of the following statements is not one of Newton's laws of motion?

The net force applied to an object is equal to its mass times its velocity.

A skater can spin faster by pulling in her arms closer to her body or spin slower by spreading her arms out from her body. This is due to

The conservation of angular momentum.

If your mass is 75 kg on Earth, what would be your mass on Saturn which is about 95 times as massive as Earth?

About the same, 75 kg

Suppose that the Sun were to suddenly disappear from our solar system. What would happen to Earth's motion?

It would begin travelling in a straight line heading out of the solar system.

What does temperature measure?

the average kinetic energy of particles in a substance

The amount of matter contained in an object is called its mass. Which of the following statements about mass is false?

The average human mass is about 150 pounds.

Radiative (or radiant) energy is

light energy

Without telescopes or other aid, we can see the Moon in the night sky because it

reflects visible light coming from the Sun