General Astronomy
Chapter Exam Questions
Course Introduction
General Astronomy is an introductory course that explores the fundamental concepts of astronomy, including the structure and evolution of the universe, solar system, stars, galaxies, and cosmic phenomena. Students will gain a broad understanding of celestial objects, motion, observation techniques, and the scientific methods used in astronomical discoveries. The course also covers the historical development of astronomical theories and discusses current advancements and unresolved questions in the field. Through lectures, visual materials, and observational projects, students will develop a foundational appreciation of the universe and humanitys place within it.
Recommended Textbook
Astronomy The Universe at a Glance 1st Edition by Eric Chaisson
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Night Sky
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Q1) Which statement about the ecliptic is FALSE?
A) The Sun appears to move about a degree per day eastward long it.
B) It is tilted 23.5 degrees with respect to the equator.
C) The year is marked by the Sun's return to the same place along it.
D) The Moon can never leave it, but moves twelve times faster than the Sun.
E) The major planets stay close to it, but not always on it.
Answer: D
Q2) How did Aristotle apply the scientific method to lunar eclipses?
Answer: He noted that during all lunar eclipses, the Earth always casts a circular shadow considerably larger than the Moon's disk, so hypothesized the Earth was in fact a sphere and predicted that future eclipses would show the same curved shadow of Earth.
Q3) If the Moon rises exactly at sunset, what will its phase be? Why?
Answer: The phase will be full because it is rising opposite the Sun. If the Moon is directly opposite the Sun in the sky, its phase will be full.
Q4) How far above and below the celestial equator can the Sun move?
Answer: The Sun never appears more than 23.5 degrees above or the below the celestial equator.
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Chapter 2: Light and Telescopes
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Q1) What is spectroscopy?
A) An analysis of the way in which atoms absorb and emit light
B) A study of the geometry of rainbows
C) An observational technique to measure the brightness of light at different colors
D) The use of CCDs to capture light more efficiently than with photographic film
E) A method to freeze atmospheric turbulence for better resolution
Answer: A
Q2) Describe the relationship between frequency and wavelength.
Answer: The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength.
Q3) How do radio interferometers greatly enhance resolution in radio wavelengths?
Answer: Hooking two or more radio dishes together with a computer lets us get resolution not equal to the diameters of the dishes, but to the separations between the scopes.
Q4) Give an example of the Doppler Effect being used in a baseball game.
Answer: The Doppler "gun" can focus on the motion of the baseball, and give us the speed that the pitcher is delivering it to the plate.
Q5) The product of the wavelength times the frequency of a wave is its ________. Answer: velocity
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Chapter 3: The Solar System
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Q1) Kepler based his theories on the precise planetary observations of Tycho Brahe.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) How much stronger is the gravitational pull of the Sun on Earth, at 1 AU, than it is on Saturn at 10 AU?
A) 5X
B) 10X
C) 25X
D) 100X
E) 250X
Answer: D
Q3) Contrast the densities of the terrestrial and Jovian planets.
Answer: Forming close to the Sun, terrestrials are denser, with iron and silicates as major components. Far out beyond the ice limit, the jovians are far less dense, with compositions much like the gases of the Sun.
Q4) Because he failed to observe stellar ________, Aristotle wrongly concluded we could not be in orbit around the Sun.
Answer: parallax
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Chapter 4: Earth and Its Moon
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Q1) Without the greenhouse effect operating in our atmosphere
A) We would not have to worry about any warming problems in the future.
B) Earth would have an average temperature of -23 degrees Celsius.
C) The ice in the polar regions would have melted long ago.
D) The ozone layer would not be weakening.
E) The Earth would have become much more like Venus long ago.
Q2) When strong solar wind storms are diverted poleward by our magnetic fields, we often observe ________ in the ionosphere.
Q3) Almost all of our atmospheric gases lie in the
A) ionosphere.
B) stratosphere.
C) troposphere.
D) ozone layer.
E) mesosphere.
Q4) How do earthquakes allow us to model the structure of Earth's core?
Q5) Infrared radiation is trapped close to our surface by the greenhouse effect.
A)True
B)False
Q6) Note at least three surface features that are driven by plate tectonics.
Q7) Explain what causes high tides on Earth.
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Chapter 5: The Eight Planets
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Q1) Evidence of liquid water in Mars' distant past suggests that it had a substantial atmosphere compared to what it has presently. What happened to its water vapor?
A) The carbon dioxide in its atmosphere dissolved in the water and combined with surface rocks.
B) Its atmosphere was mostly hydrogen and helium. Mars' gravity is too weak to hold them.
C) The water vapor has frozen out into the polar ice caps and permafrost as Mars has cooled.
D) Mars initially had such a large greenhouse effect that the atmosphere became quite hot and slowly escaped.
E) It has now all been lost in space, including the carbon dioxide and water vapor.
Q2) All 4 jovian planets have a layer of molecular hydrogen above a layer of metallic hydrogen.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is the primary effect the carbon dioxide in Venus' atmosphere has on the planet.
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Chapter 6: Small Bodies in the Solar System
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Q1) Why were the mass and density of Pluto unknown until Charon was found?
Q2) Radiation darkening explains why
A) there are so many dark craters on the jovian moons.
B) Uranus' moons are darker than Saturn's.
C) Earth's Moon is made of rock, but jovian moons are icy.
D) Iapetus has a two-faced appearance.
Q3) Triton shows similar cratering to the Lunar highlands, which suggests that it too is an old surface.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How were the rings of Uranus discovered? How have they since been imaged from Earth better?
Q5) Of the Galilean satellites, which has the oldest, most heavily cratered surface?
A) Titan
B) Io
C) Europa
D) Callisto
E) Ganymede
Q6) Why do Saturn's rings exist?
Q7) What is a planet's Roche limit?
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Chapter 7: Formation of Planetary Systems
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Q1) Why do the present methods of finding extrasolar planets (Doppler measurement and planetary transits) not favor finding solar systems like ours?
Q2) The jovian planets
A) all lie less than 5 AU from the Sun.
B) all have rings around their equators.
C) all spin slower than the Earth.
D) have satellite systems with less than 4 moons.
E) are all much more dense than any of the terrestrials planets.
Q3) Comets that we can see originate in the ________ and ________.
Q4) Stars with multiple planets orbiting them are expected to be rare.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Extrasolar planets are placed in groups by their approximate masses. What are four of these classes?
Q6) Any model of solar system formation must explain why every planet is relatively isolated in space.
A)True
B)False
Q7) Why are infrared observations useful when observing extrasolar planets?
Page 9
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Chapter 8: The Sun
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Q1) Why is it hard to observe the chromosphere?
Q2) At very large distances from the Sun, its corona turns into the solar wind. A)True
B)False
Q3) Sunspots are only about 2,000 K cooler than the much brighter photosphere. A)True B)False
Q4) Explain what is meant by the solar cycle. What role does magnetism play?
Q5) Describe the method of energy production in the Sun. What is the fuel? What is the end product? What kind of interactions occur? What is the role of temperature in the process? Could we use this process to produce energy on Earth?
Q6) The sunspot cycle is sometimes described as lasting 11 years, but others prefer to consider it as 22 years; explain the rationale.
Q7) The ________-year solar cycle is characterized by a variation in the number of sunspots and a reversal of the polarity of the Sun as a whole.
Q8) The proton-proton chain requires a temperature of 100 million K to get started. A)True B)False
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Measuring the Stars
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Q1) If a star appears to move back and forth relative to other stars over a six-month period, this motion is due to the star's
A) transverse motion.
B) radial motion.
C) parallax shift.
D) Doppler shift.
E) true space motion.
Q2) If two stars are the same size and one is twice the temperature of the other, how much more luminous is the hotter one?
Q3) On the H-R diagram, red supergiants like Betelgeuse lie
A) at the bottom left.
B) at the bottom right.
C) at the top left.
D) at the top right.
E) They can't be plotted, for they are not main sequence.
Q4) A type B9 star is hotter than a type A0.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What role does hydrogen play in spectral classification?
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Chapter 10: Star Formation and Evolution
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Q1) When helium fusion begins in a one solar mass main star, it begins gradually, with this rate slowly increasing over time.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which event marks the birth of a star?
A) Formation of the planetary nebula
B) Fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms
C) Collapse of an interstellar cloud
D) Formation of a photosphere
E) Instability in an interstellar cloud
Q3) When a low-mass star runs out of hydrogen in its core, it gets brighter. Why?
Q4) What is causing the Trifid Nebula to glow?
Q5) The Trifid Nebula is an example of a(n) ________ nebula.
Q6) What is a helium flash?
Q7) What is the significance of 8 solar masses in stellar evolution?
Q8) Contrast the brightest stars of young open and old globular clusters.
Q9) Hydrogen is the major gas in the interstellar medium.
A)True
B)False
Q10) Why does gravitational contraction halt in collapsing protostars? Page 12
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Chapter 11: Stellar Explosions
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Q1) The Chandrasekhar mass limit is
A) 0.08 solar masses.
B) 0.4 solar masses.
C) 1.4 solar masses.
D) 3 solar masses.
E) 8 solar masses.
Q2) Except for hydrogen and most of the helium, all the elements have been formed through stellar nucleosynthesis.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is the only element in your body that was formed during the Big Bang, and not in cores of stars? Explain how you know this.
Q4) Compare the amount of time a 20 solar mass star will stay on the main sequence to the length of time its iron core can exist.
Q5) A gamma-ray burster emits a quantity of energy similar to that emitted in a
Q6) Can our Sun ever become a nova? Why?
Q7) Why should the youngest stars be made of the heaviest elements?
Q8) What is the importance of 1.4 solar masses in stellar evolution?
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Chapter 12: Black Holes
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Q1) In 1921, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to ________ for his work on the particle nature of light.
Q2) When observing an object, such as a space ship that is moving very quickly relative to you, the length of objects on that object will appear to be
A) longer than when they are at rest.
B) the same length as when they are at rest.
C) shorter than when they are at rest.
D) narrower than when they are at rest.
E) wider than when they are at rest.
Q3) How is the Schwartzschild radius calculated?
Q4) Einstein earned the Nobel Prize for his
A) special theory of relativity.
B) general theory of relativity.
C) development of the equivalence of energy and matter, E = mc².
D) work on the particle nature of light.
E) contributions to the development of the fission bomb.
Q5) Why would the tidal forces around a black hole be of concern to a space explorer interested in investigating the area near a black hole?
Q6) Something falling into a black hole will be ________ by tides.
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Chapter 13: The Milky Way Galaxy
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Q1) How does content of elements heavier than helium vary between young and old stars? Why?
Q2) The Milky Way we see in the sky is simply our edge-on view of our home Galaxy.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The core of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A, is a strong radio source in the sky.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The "aspect ratio" of thickness to width of the Galactic disk is about
A) 1:2.
B) 1:5.
C) 1:10.
D) 1:100.
E) 1:1,000.
Q5) Shapley found the Sun is located about half way out the disc from the center of the disk of the Galaxy.
A)True B)False
Q6) Our solar system is in the Galactic ________ of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Q7) Describe our location in the Milky Way.
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Chapter 14: Galaxies
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Q1) Which of the following paraphrases Hubble's Law?
A) The faster the galaxy spins, the more massive and luminous it is.
B) The greater the distance to a galaxy, the greater its redshift.
C) The greater the distance to a galaxy, the fainter it is.
D) The more distant a galaxy is, the younger it appears.
E) The older the galaxy appears to us, the more luminous it is.
Q2) Quasars can emit as much as thousands of times as much energy as normal galaxies.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The magnetic fields carried by jets coming from active galactic nuclei are generated by
A) the combined magnetic fields of the many stars near the galaxy's center.
B) the central black hole.
C) the movement of the interstellar matter of the galaxy.
D) the movement of the stars in the galaxy.
E) charged matter in the accretion disk of the central black hole.
Q4) ________ galaxies are essentially featureless; their light reveals evidence for the presence of only old red Main Sequence and red giant stars.
Q5) What type of galaxy are the two Magellanic Clouds? How do we know this visually?
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Chapter 15: Cosmology and the Universe
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Q1) Before about 4 billion years ago the universe was
A) radiation dominated.
B) quark dominated.
C) lepton dominated.
D) matter dominated.
E) dark energy dominated.
Q2) The Big Bang was an expansion of matter into empty space.
A)True
B)False
Q3) About how hot was the Big Bang when matter and energy "decoupled"?
A) 900 million K
B) 15 million K
C) 3,000 K
D) 300 K
E) 2.73 K
Q4) Deuterium was made only in primordial nucleosynthesis, since stars destroy it.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Describe the separation of the superforce and the effect it had on the Universe.
Page 18
Q6) All of the ________ now observed must be primordial.
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