Astronomy and Astrophysics
Mock Exam
Course Introduction
Astronomy and Astrophysics explores the fundamental principles that govern our universe beyond Earth, covering topics such as the solar system, stars, galaxies, black holes, and cosmology. The course introduces students to observational techniques, theoretical models, and computational methods used to investigate celestial phenomena. It emphasizes the physical laws such as gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear physics that explain the lifecycle of stars, galaxy formation, and the evolution of the cosmos. Through lectures, discussions, and hands-on activities, students gain an appreciation for current discoveries, the history of astronomical thought, and the ongoing quest to understand the origins and fate of the universe.
Recommended Textbook
Understanding Our Universe 2nd Edition by Stacy Palen
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Chapter 1: Thinking Like an Astronomer
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Sample Questions
Q1) Our universe is approximately ________ years old.
A) 14 million
B) 14 billion
C) 14 trillion
D) 14 thousand
Answer: B
Q2) Approximately how many meters are in 12 ft?
A) 3
B) 4
C) 12
D) 36
Answer: B
Q3) A hypothesis may become a theory:
A) after many repeated attempts to falsify it fail.
B) if a majority of scientists agree on its propositions.
C) after it has been logically proved.
D) if it makes at least one verifiable prediction.
Answer: A
Q4) Name three dwarf planets.
Answer: Pluto,Ceres,Eris.
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Chapter 2: Patterns in the Skymotions of Earth and the Moon
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Sample Questions
Q1) On which great celestial circle(s)on the celestial sphere would you find the position of the autumnal equinox?
Answer: On both the celestial equator and the ecliptic planes.
Q2) What is the length of day during the equinoxes and solstices? Does it matter if you are in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: The equinoxes occur when the Sun is directly above the equator; the entire world experiences a 12-hour day and a 12-hour night.The solstices occur when the Sun is farthest from the equator (north or south).On these days,one hemisphere experiences its longest day and shortest night,while the other hemisphere experiences its shortest day and longest night.
Q3) The Earth's axial tilt is 23.5 degrees.If the Earth's axial tilt was 15 degrees,which would be TRUE?
A) The seasons would remain the same.
B) Summers would be warmer.
C) Winters would last longer.
D) Winters would be warmer.
Answer: D
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Laws of Motion
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Sample Questions
Q1) Given a constant acceleration from rest,how is the increase in speed computed?
Answer: The speed of an object moving with constant acceleration is obtained by multiplying the acceleration by the interval of time over which the acceleration occurred.
Q2) If a 100-kg astronaut pushes on a 5,000-kg satellite and the satellite experiences an acceleration of 0.1 m/s²,what is the acceleration experienced by the astronaut in the opposite direction?
A) 5 m/s<sup>2</sup>
B) 10 m/s<sup>2</sup>
C) 50 m/s<sup>2</sup>
D) 0.1 m/s<sup>2</sup>
Answer: A
Q3) An object in a circular orbit is in a perpetual state of free fall,i.e.,accelerating toward Earth but never reaching it.Explain.
Answer: The acceleration of the object is such that its change in motion is not its speed but its direction of motion.The rate of change of this direction is such that its direction of motion is always parallel to the surface of the Earth.
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Light and Telescopes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Ultraviolet radiation is hard to observe primarily because:
A) Earth's atmosphere easily absorbs it.
B) no space-based telescopes operate at ultraviolet wavelengths.
C) only the lowest-mass stars emit ultraviolet light.
D) very few objects emit at ultraviolet wavelengths.
Q2) Compare and contrast the wavelengths,frequencies,speeds,and energies of red and blue photons.
Q3) Which telescope would collect 100 times more light than a 1-meter telescope?
A) 100-meter telescope
B) 50-meter telescope
C) 30-meter telescope
D) 10-meter telescope
Q4) Why do reflecting telescopes usually have a secondary mirror in addition to a primary mirror?
A) to increase the light-gathering power
B) to make the telescope shorter
C) to increase the focal length
D) to combat chromatic aberration
Q5) Explain how adaptive optics help compensate for atmospheric seeing.
Q6) Does the wavelength of a wave change when entering a refractive medium? Explain.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: The Formation of Stars and Planets
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Q1) The primary atmospheres of the planets are made mostly of:
A) carbon and oxygen.
B) hydrogen and helium.
C) iron and nickel.
D) nitrogen and argon.
Q2) What does conservation of angular momentum mean?
Q3) How much material in an accretion disk goes into forming the planets,moons,and smaller objects?
A) most of it
B) roughly half of it
C) a small amount of it
D) barely any at all
Q4) Explain why an accretion disk forms around a protostar when an interstellar cloud collapses.
Q5) The primordial atmosphere of Earth consisted of what type of chemical elements,and from where did it originate? What chemical elements did the secondary atmosphere of Earth consist of,and from where did it originate?
Q6) Briefly explain the five different observational methods we use to detect extrasolar planets.
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Chapter 6: Terrestrial Worlds in the Inner Solar System
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Q1) How does the radioactive heating of Earth vary from when it was first formed 4.6 billion years ago until today?
Q2) If a radioactive element has a half-life of 10,000 years,what fraction of it is left in a rock after 40,000 years?
A) one-half
B) one-fourth
C) one-eighth
D) one-sixteenth
Q3) In the past,the Moon was closer to Earth,and the differences in the heights of the ocean at high and low tides were:
A) the same.
B) larger.
C) smaller.
D) tides were nonexistent in the past
Q4) Why are impact craters rare on the surface of Earth but plentiful on the Moon?
Q5) How can a planet or moon that is inactive geologically have incidents of volcanism?
Q6) What are the four main processes that shape the surfaces of the terrestrial planets?
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Page 8
Chapter 7: Atmospheres of Venus, earth, and Mars
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Sample Questions
Q1) The major difference in the composition of Earth's atmosphere compared to the atmospheres of Venus and Mars is a direct consequence of:
A) life on the planet.
B) a geologically active interior.
C) a moderate greenhouse effect.
D) the presence of liquid water.
Q2) Which of the following does NOT contribute to more extreme seasonal variations on Mars compared to Earth?
A) Its orbital eccentricity is larger.
B) Its spin axis is tilted more with respect to its orbital plane.
C) Its atmosphere is much lower in density.
D) All of the above contribute to martian seasons being more extreme than seasons on Earth.
Q3) Based solely on mass,which of the following terrestrial planets would you expect to retain a secondary atmosphere?
A) Mercury
B) Venus
C) Mars
D) the Moon
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Page 9
Chapter 8: The Giant Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Explain why it was difficult for the Voyager space probe to detect Jupiter's ring system as it was approaching the planet but easy for it to detect the rings once it had passed behind Jupiter.
Q2) A planet will have bands in its atmosphere like Jupiter and Saturn if:
A) Hadley circulation is the main effect governing the atmosphere.
B) the planet rotates slowly.
C) the wind speeds vary greatly with latitude.
D) the planet has a high temperature.
Q3) Neptune and Uranus probably took longer to form than Jupiter and Saturn because the solar nebula was ________ at the radius of Neptune and Uranus.
A) rotating faster
B) composed of rockier planetesimals
C) not as dense
D) hotter
Q4) Why can water exist in the hot interiors of the giant planets?
A) The pressure is high enough to prevent the water from becoming vapor.
B) Some of the metallic hydrogen in the core mixes with oxygen.
C) Regions of the interior are cooler than the surrounding regions.
D) Water released from moons via cryovolcanism is absorbed.
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Chapter 9: Small Bodies of the Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) You find a blackened rock lying on top of the snow.You find that it is fairly dense and suspect it might be a meteorite.You take it to a lab,and they find that its age is 1.3 Gyr.Is this a meteorite? Why,or why not?
Q2) A comet having an orbit of 50 years would likely have come from the:
A) Trojan family
B) Oort Cloud
C) zodiacal zone
D) Kuiper Belt
Q3) Which of following is FALSE?
A) Pluto has five moons.
B) Pluto has a mass that is one-tenth of Earth's mass.
C) Pluto's orbit sometimes brings it closer to the Sun than to Neptune.
D) Pluto has a rocky core surrounded by a water-ice mantle.
Q4) Which of the following can be used as an indicator of the age of a moon's surface?
A) surface brightness
B) crater density
C) volcanic activity
D) all of the above
Q5) What does the existence of M-type asteroids tell us about their origin?
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Chapter 10: Measuring the Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) Two similar stars have the same temperature.If star A is four times brighter than star B,then:
A) star B is two times farther away than star A.
B) star B is four times farther away than star A.
C) star B and star A lie at the same distance from us.
D) It is impossible to determine their relative distances from the information given.
Q2) In the quantum mechanical view of the atom,an electron is best thought of as:
A) a cloud that is centered on the nucleus.
B) a pointlike particle orbiting the nucleus.
C) free to orbit at any distance from the nucleus.
D) All of the above are true.
Q3) Stars of similar temperatures but different sizes will have:
A) similar luminosities but different masses.
B) similar masses but different distances.
C) different spectral types but similar luminosities.
D) similar spectral types but different luminosities.
Q4) A star with a stellar parallax of 0.035 arcsec is at a distance of how many parsecs?
Q5) How is the unit of length known as a parsec defined?
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Chapter 11: Our Star: the Sun
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Sample Questions
Q1) Show that a star with the same mass,composition,radius,and luminosity as the Sun,but with a higher temperature (that is,a "too-hot" Sun),leads to a contradiction.
Q2) The solar neutrino problem was solved by:
A) adjusting the rates of hydrogen burning in solar models.
B) improving detector efficiencies so more neutrinos were observed.
C) postulating that neutrinos had mass and oscillated between three different types.
D) lowering the percentage of helium in models of solar composition.
Q3) Light from the photosphere of the Sun reaches Earth approximately ________ times faster than photons released by fusion in the Sun's core.
A) 1,000
B) 600,000
C) 1 million
D) 6 billion
Q4) The chromosphere appears red because:
A) it is hotter than the photosphere.
B) as the Sun rotates, the chromosphere appears to move away from us radially.
C) it has a higher concentration of heavy metals.
D) its spectrum is dominated by Ha emission.
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Page 13
Chapter 12: Evolution of Low-Mass Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) The evolutionary cutoff between low- and high-mass stars occurs at approximately:
A) 0.5 M¤.
B) 1 M¤.
C) 4 M¤.
D) 8 M¤.
Q2) Helium burns in the core of a horizontal branch star via ________ and produces
A) the triple-alpha reaction; carbon
B) the proton-proton chain; lithium
C) the triple-alpha reaction; oxygen
D) the proton-proton chain; iron
Q3) A 1-M¤ star in a binary system could create the following chemical element and eject it into the interstellar medium:
A) carbon.
B) helium.
C) iron.
D) all of the above
Q4) What particles are degenerate in a white dwarf?
Q5) Explain the significance of Roche lobes in a binary system.
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Chapter 13: Evolution of High-Mass Stars
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Q1) ________ is the result of mass distorting the fabric of spacetime.
A) Energy
B) Radiation
C) Fusion
D) Gravity
Q2) What is the difference between the singularity and the event horizon of a black hole?
Q3) While traveling the galaxy in a spacecraft,you and a colleague set out to investigate a 1-M¤ black hole.Your colleague hops aboard an escape pod and drops into a circular orbit around the black hole maintaining a distance of 10 km from it,while you remain much farther away inside the spacecraft.After doing some experiments to measure the strength of gravity,your colleague signals the results back to you using a green laser.What would you see,and why?
Q4) What is the radius of the event horizon of a 10 solar mass black hole?
A) 3 km
B) 10 km
C) 30 km
D) 100 km
Q5) Why do large,high-mass main-sequence stars never become red giants?
Q6) What supports a neutron star from collapsing to form a black hole?
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Measuring Galaxies
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Q1) What is observed to happen to the velocities of stars that reside at greater distances from the center of the galaxy?
A) They move slower and slower.
B) They move faster and faster.
C) They vary greatly in a random fashion.
D) They essentially stay the same.
Q2) If a galaxy has a recessional velocity of 880 km/s,what is its distance if the Hubble constant is 72 km/s/Mpc?
A) 12 Mpc
B) 27 Mpc
C) 123 Mpc
D) 2,700 Mpc
Q3) The Hubble constant,H ,represents:
A) the rate of expansion of the universe.
B) the speed at which galaxies are moving away from us.
C) the time it takes a galaxy to move twice as far away from us.
D) the size of the universe.
Q4) Name the two primary classes of proposed sources of dark matter.What objects are included in each class,and which one is the most likely source of dark matter?
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Chapter 15: Our Galaxy: the Milky Way
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Q1) Most of the mass in our galaxy is in the form of:
A) stars
B) gas
C) dust
D) dark matter
Q2) Why can the observed chemical abundance of a star tell you something about its age?
Q3) The chemical composition of a star's atmosphere tells us:
A) how much nuclear burning has gone on in the star.
B) the star's evolutionary stage.
C) the chemical composition of the cloud from which the star formed.
D) all of the above
Q4) The discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for variable stars allowed them to be used as standard candles.Who made this important discovery?
A) Ejnar Hertzsprung
B) Henrietta Leavitt
C) Henry Norris Russell
D) Harlow Shapley
Q5) Sketch an edge-on view of the Milky Way.Label the locations of the bulge,disk,and halo.
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Chapter 16: The Evolution of the Universe
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Q1) What would the universe be like if there were complete symmetry between matter and antimatter?
A) It would look similar to our universe, but half of it would be composed of antimatter.
B) We would observe two universes, one an antimatter reflection of the other.
C) There would be no universe because all of the matter and antimatter would have been annihilated.
D) There would be a universe, but it would be completely composed of energy.
Q2) Whether or not parallel universes exist is hard to determine because:
A) our universe is so big.
B) the parallel universes cannot communicate with each other.
C) the other universes do not emit any light.
D) parallel universes destroy each other if they come into contact.
Q3) Soon after the Big Bang,we believe the four fundamental forces of nature were united into one superforce,and ________ was the first to split off from the others.
A) the strong force
B) electromagnetism
C) gravity
D) nucleosynthesis
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Chapter 17: Formation of Structure
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Q1) Which of the following provided the gravity to form galaxy fragments in the early universe?
A) cold dark matter halos
B) galaxy clusters
C) hot dark matter halos
D) large clouds of gas and dust
Q2) Structure formation in the universe proceeds hierarchically,meaning that:
A) large objects collapse then fragment to form smaller objects.
B) large objects form at the same times as smaller objects.
C) small objects collapse then merge to form larger objects.
D) only small objects form and are stable over time.
Q3) Galaxy clusters have been observed to be rich in hot,X-ray-emitting gas.What is keeping the gas in the cluster?
A) dark matter
B) the gravitational pull of the galaxies
C) the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the galaxies
D) the low speed of the hot gas
Q4) Astronomers currently think that the last stage of the universe will be the Dark Era.Explain what that implies for the future of the universe.
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Chapter 18: Life in the Universe
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Q1) Make an argument in support of the following statement: "The earliest forms of life on Earth must have been extremophiles."
Q2) Venus and Mars have little free oxygen in their atmospheres.What has allowed Earth to have a large amount of oxygen in its atmosphere?
A) bombardment
B) cyanobacteria and other photosynthesizing organisms
C) volcanism
D) water on Earth's surface
Q3) If you wanted to find intelligent life in the universe,what spectral types of stars would you study and why?
Q4) What occurred approximately 500 million years ago?
A) the extinction of the dinosaurs
B) the Cambrian explosion
C) the rise of mammals
D) the birth of the first humans
Q5) Describe the experiments of Harold Urey and Stanley Miller in understanding the origins of life.
Q6) What determines whether or not a specific mutation is passed on to future generations?
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