NS 2/3 CDA #5 Astronomy Study Guide

NS 2/3 CDA #5 – Astronomy Study Guide

1.What is astronomy?

2.Who first proposed the "Big Bang" theory in 1927?

3.What became the first official manmade object to pass beyond the boundaries of our solar system?

4.What instrument records the color bands in the spectrum to be analyzed to tell scientists which elements produced the light?

5.What device is used to magnify the images of distant objects?

6.What spacecraft helped to rewrite the book on solar physics and our understanding of how and why the sun functions, and the effects the sun has on terrestrial weather and communication?

7.What spacecraft, named for the man who first documented the moons of Jupiter, arrived at Jupiter in Dec 1995 and took detailed observations of the planet and its moons?

8.What were the names SPUTNIK, EXPLORER, and MARINER given to?

9.Where is the world's largest steerable radio telescope located?

10.What are Quasars?

11.What project's goal is to scan the 1,000 closest stars for all frequencies in the microwave region between 1.0 and 3.0 GHz for evidence that might indicate intelligent origin?

12.What does the amount of light a telescope can collect depend entirely on?

13.Why is there a lack of gradual daily temperature changes and an absence of sound on the moon?

14.What are super-heavy magnetic concentrations, probably massive bodies such as asteroids, lying beneath the lunar surface are called?

15.Where are the moon's mountains concentrated?

16.What is a lunar eclipse?

17.On average how far is the Moon from the Earth?

18.What are the broken rocks called that spray the surface of the moon from crashing meteorites?

19.How were the igneous rocks that are on the surface of the Moon formed?

20.What is the name of the most conspicuous crater on the Moon, located in its southern hemisphere?

21.What is the layer of dust made up of tiny pieces of glass that covers the surface of the moon?.

22.What is the alignment of the Earth, Moon, and Sunat new moon?

23.How long have sunspots been known to last?

24.What is a tremendous source of environmentally friendly power that can satisfy the growing needs of all civilized mankind, if it could be economically harnessed?

25.How does the sun's energy pass through space?

26.What is the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere called?

27.What is a total eclipse of the sun called?

28.What is the closest star to the earth?

29.What do electrically charged sunspot gases which escape the sun's chromosphere and enter the earth's atmosphere near the magnetic north pole cause?

30.What is the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere?

31.What is the average distance from the Sun to the Earth, about 93 million miles, called?

32.What is the time it takes a planet to go around the Sun called?

33.Which planet is the fourth planet from the Sun?

34.Which planet has a mysterious "Great Red Spot" in its southern hemisphere?

35.Which planet can be seen as a bright early evening or morning star because of its orbit between the Earth and the Sun?

36.Which planet spins clockwise opposite its orbit around the Sun?

37.What planet is called the "red" planet?

38.Which planet has rings that extend outward from 7,000 to 171,000 miles?

39.Which planets do not have moons?

40.The gravitational force of what object keeps planets in their orbits?

41.What is the planet closest to the sun?

42.What heavenly bodies in our solar system are the most plentiful and number more than one hundred billion?

43.Between which two planets are Asteroids generally found?

44.What most famous of all comets generally appears every 75 years?

45.What do we call the fiery death of a meteor?

46.After the Sun, what star is closest to the Earth?

47.What is a light-year?

48.By which two factors are Stars normally classified?

49.What do we look at to determine the nature or composition of a star?

50.What is a concentration of mass so great and dense that no light can escape its gravitational pull called?