Introduction to Astronomy
Chapter Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Introduction to Astronomy offers a comprehensive overview of the universe beyond Earth, exploring fundamental concepts such as the solar system, stars, galaxies, and cosmology. The course covers the history and methods of astronomical observation, the life cycle of stars, the structure of the universe, and the underlying physical laws that govern celestial phenomena. Students will gain an understanding of key astronomical tools and techniques, as well as contemporary topics like exoplanet discovery and the search for extraterrestrial life, fostering an appreciation for the scale and wonder of the cosmos.
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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) The Full Moon rises around sunrise, and sets around sunset.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) When the Sun rises it is located in the constellation Gemini. When the Sun sets later that same day it will be
A) in the constellation Aries.
B) in the constellation Taurus.
C) in the constellation Gemini.
D) in the constellation Cancer.
E) in the constellation Leo.
Answer: C
Q3) The distances to bodies in the solar system are a few light minutes to light hours. A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) The ________ is the totality of all space, time, matter, and energy.
Answer: universe
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Chapter 2: Light and Telescopes
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Q1) Explain how Bohr's model creates emission and absorption lines in the spectrum. Answer: Bohr's model has the electron orbitals quantized into discrete energies. Each upward transition to a higher energy state produces an absorption line (energy is absorbed). Each downward transition produces an emission line (energy is given off). The energy absorbed or emitted is exactly equal to the difference in energy levels.
Q2) ________ is the color of the lowest frequency visible light.
Answer: Red
Q3) Which of these is constant for ALL types of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum?
A) Amplitude
B) Wavelength
C) Frequency
D) Velocity
E) Photon energy
Answer: D
Q4) How do sound and light waves differ?
Answer: Sound waves travel much slower, and need a physical medium, such as air, to be transmitted. Light travels best in the vacuum of space.
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4
Chapter 3: The Solar System
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Q1) According to Kepler's third law, the square of the planet's period in years is A) equal to its perihelion distance from the Sun in AU.
B) inversely proportional to its mass in kilograms.
C) equal to the fourth power of its average temperature in degrees Kelvin.
D) proportional to the cube of its semimajor axis in AU.
E) equal to the square of its aphelion distance in AU.
Answer: D
Q2) A fatal flaw with Ptolemy's model is its inability to predict the observed phases of A) the Sun during an eclipse.
B) the Moon in its monthly cycle.
C) Mercury and Venus.
D) Mars and Jupiter.
E) Jupiter and Saturn.
Answer: C
Q3) Kepler based his theories on the precise planetary observations of Tycho Brahe.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 4: Earth and Its Moon
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Q1) What is the process that physically transfers heat from a lower (hotter) to a higher (cooler) level?
A) Radiation
B) Translation
C) Convection
D) Reflection
E) Conduction
Q2) When tectonic plates collide, they fuse together and come to rest.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Like other solid bodies in the solar system, Earth's surface was kept molten by A) radioactivity.
B) differentiation.
C) convection.
D) bombardment by small bodies.
E) the solar nebula.
Q4) Where is the newest material in the Earth's crust found?
Q5) Weather occurs in which layer of the atmosphere? Why?
Q6) Relate the formation of the Himalayas to plate tectonics.
Q7) What does it mean when we say the Earth's interior is differentiated?
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Chapter 5: The Eight Planets
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Q1) In 1989, Neptune was found to have a huge storm named the A) South Tropical Disturbance.
B) Great Red Spot.
C) Great Dark Spot.
D) Hellas Basin.
E) Galileo Regio.
Q2) What do our magnetic field and Jupiter's share?
A) Similar field strength
B) Same polarity
C) Auroral displays in the polar regions
D) Fields that extend inward all the way to the Sun
E) Fields that extend outward past Pluto
Q3) Neptune and Uranus have a bluish tint because
A) at their distances, the Sun appears blue, the red absorbed by dust in the ecliptic.
B) they are far away and distance makes objects appear bluish.
C) their atmospheres contain methane, which absorbs red light.
D) their atmospheres contain hydrogen and helium.
E) ammonia ice reflects blue light better than any other color.
Q4) What evidence is there for liquid water under Europa's surface?
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Chapter 6: Small Bodies in the Solar System
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Q1) What did the Voyager mission discover about the main rings of Saturn?
A) There are hundreds of small moons in the ring system.
B) They were less dense than the rings of Jupiter.
C) There are several small moons inside the inner-most ring.
D) The ring system is much thicker than originally believed.
E) They are composed of tens of thousands of narrow ringlets.
Q2) The orbits of most comets
A) are like the planets, fairly circular and in the ecliptic plane.
B) lie almost entirely beyond the orbit of Neptune.
C) have perihelions within the orbits of Mercury.
D) go no farther out than Pluto, then return to the sun again.
E) are shorter than the 76 year period for Comet Halley.
Q3) The rings of Uranus were discovered from Earth when the planet passed in front of a star.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Neptune's moon Triton appears to have a nearly uncratered surface. Explain.
Q5) Pluto is visible to the naked eye on extremely dark nights.
A)True
B)False
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Formation of Planetary Systems
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Q1) The Kepler mission uses which technique to detect planet candidates?
A) Radial velocity measurements
B) Direct imaging
C) Measurements of transverse motion
D) Planetary transits
Q2) Why are infrared observations useful when observing extrasolar planets?
Q3) None of the other stars yet studied has more than one planet orbiting it.
A)True
B)False
Q4) In light of modern solar system theory, why do the orbits of the planets all lie in the same plane?
A) The Sun's gravity forced them into these orbits.
B) The angular momentum of the solar system was kept to a minimum this way.
C) The early solar nebula flattened into a disk.
D) Comets would have wiped out any not in this protected plane.
E) This happened purely by chance.
Q5) Super-Earths are earthlike planets where life is possible.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What is the role of dust in the condensation theory?
Page 9
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Chapter 8: The Sun
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Q1) If the last peak in sunspot numbers occurred in 2013, then the next solar max is
Q2) The outward pressure of hot gas in the Sun
A) is balanced by the inward gravitational pressure.
B) is increasing the Sun's diameter.
C) is cooling the photosphere.
D) is responsible for variations in the sunspot cycle.
E) weakens the magnetic field.
Q3) The critical temperature the core must reach for a star to shine by fusion is A) 5,800 K.
B) 11,000 K.
C) 127,000 K.
D) 10 million K.
E) 100 million K.
Q4) The sunspot cycle is sometimes described as lasting 11 years, but others prefer to consider it as 22 years; explain the rationale.
Q5) At very large distances from the Sun, its corona turns into the solar wind. A)True
B)False
Q6) Explain what is meant by the solar cycle. What role does magnetism play?
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Measuring the Stars
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Q1) Having nothing to do with trigonometry, ________ parallaxes use the width of absorption lines to estimate the star's luminosity and size and distance.
A) bolometric
B) photometric
C) spectroscopic
D) holographic
E) videometric
Q2) In the H-R diagram, the bright blue-white stars that dominate the naked eye sky lie to the
A) top left.
B) top right.
C) middle of the main sequence.
D) top center.
E) bottom left.
Q3) How is proper motion measured?
Q4) From hottest to coolest, the seven letters for the star types are ________.
Q5) In a large sampling of stars, the largest group represented in the H-R diagram will be the main sequence stars. Why are they so common?
Q6) How can a white dwarf be hotter than our Sun, yet much less luminous?
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Chapter 10: Star Formation and Evolution
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Q1) How has the chemical composition of the core of the Sun changed in the past 4.5 billion years? Are earthlings (if any) likely to freeze in another 4-5 billion years? Explain.
Q2) During the hydrogen shell burning phase
A) the star grows more luminous.
B) the star becomes less luminous.
C) helium is burning in the core.
D) the core is expanding.
E) hydrogen is burning in the central core.
Q3) Which of the following is TRUE regarding planetary nebulae?
A) Some are spherical, but most have bipolar structure.
B) They are the result of the mass loss during the main sequence stage of the most massive stars.
C) They are the rings of material surrounding newly formed stars that will eventually form the planetary systems.
D) They are the ejected envelopes of highly evolved brown dwarf stars.
E) They are the coronas surrounding most blue stragglers.
Q4) An interstellar gas cloud has the mass to form hundreds of stars. What generally happens to it?
Q5) Why can we say a star spends its life trying to maintain equilibrium?
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Chapter 11: Stellar Explosions
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Q1) Iron nuclei are the most tightly bound nuclei, which is why their production leads to type II supernovae.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Why does iron formation cause a high mass star to "have a heart attack"?
Q3) What would be most likely to disrupt the normal evolution of a star? Give examples of this.
Q4) A star can be a supernova
A) in predictable cycles of decades.
B) a few times, at unpredictable intervals.
C) only if it can fuse iron in its core.
D) before it reaches the main sequence, if it is massive enough.
E) only once.
Q5) The final core collapse of a massive star takes about 13 seconds.
A)True
B)False
Q6) In a nova, there is a white dwarf, an evolving companion star, and a(n) ________ surrounding the white dwarf's equator.
Q7) Can our Sun ever become a nova? Why?
Page 13
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) The largest known black holes
A) create the dark nebulae in the plane of the Milky Way.
B) can be no more than 1.4 solar masses, according to Chandrasekhar.
C) lie in the cores of the most massive galaxies.
D) can be no bigger than a small city, just like neutron stars.
E) can be no bigger than the Earth, like white dwarfs.
Q2) Relate escape velocity to the event horizon.
Q3) Which of the following is NOT an argument for Cygnus X-1's being a true black hole?
A) Spectroscopic data suggests hot gas is flowing from the companion B star onto Cygnus X-1.
B) The mass of the visible B star is even greater than Cygnus X-1, at around 25 solar masses.
C) Cygnus X-1's mass is estimated to be about 10 solar masses.
D) X-rays from Cygnus X-1 vary on time scales as short as a millisecond.
E) X-ray observations around the object support a temperature of several million K.
Q4) Special relativity predicts that light bends near dense objects.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: The Milky Way Galaxy
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Q1) Most of the mass of the Milky Way seems to exist in the form of
A) young stars in the disk.
B) old stars in the Galactic halo.
C) hydrogen gas in the disk and spiral arms.
D) dark matter out in the Galactic halo.
E) the black hole in the Galactic center.
Q2) What do the orbits of halo and disk stars tell us about the formation of the Milky Way?
Q3) The radio source ________ is located in a place consistent with the center of our Galaxy.
A) Cygnus X-1
B) 3C 273
C) 47 Tucanae
D) M-8, the Lagoon Nebula
E) Sgr A*
Q4) A pulsating variable star with a period of 10 days would be a Cepheid.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Who was Henrietta Leavitt, and what did she do to help map the universe?
Q6) How old is the Galaxy? How do we know this?
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Galaxies
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Q1) Whether or NOT we see radio lobes from radio galaxies depends on their ________ relative to our line of sight.
Q2) Although theory says a massive black hole with an accretion disk should be emitting X-rays, many black holes emit
A) mostly in the infrared.
B) only in the visible.
C) mainly in the gamma.
D) virtually no radiation at all.
E) equally across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Q3) Collisions between galaxies is thought to A) have stopped about 5 billion years ago.
B) be commonplace.
C) have never occurred.
D) be extremely rare.
E) have only occurred between 10 and 15 billion years ago.
Q4) Describe how gravitational lensing works. What can it tell us about the galaxy that is doing the lensing? How is lensing valuable to the study of dark matter?
Q5) How did Hubble use the cosmological redshift to determine distance?
Q6) Distinguish an E0 from an E7 galaxy.
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Cosmology and the Universe
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Q1) From the 1970s to the present, the accepted value of H has almost doubled, so
A) the age of the universe is twice as old as we originally believed.
B) the age of the Universe is half what we believed.
C) the Copernican principle is not valid beyond our solar system.
D) the ages of the oldest globular clusters are invalid.
E) the critical density must also be halved.
Q2) ________ is the concept that the universe looks the same in all directions.
Q3) The crossover point from radiation to matter domination occurred
A) when the strong force separated from the other two forces.
B) with the emission of the cosmic background radiation.
C) about 50,000 years after the Big Bang, at a temperature of about 16,000 K.
D) with the creation of neutrons and protons, at about 10¹³ K.
E) with the creation of electrons and positrons at about 6 × 10 K.
Q4) At present the universe is expanding, but we are not certain if this expansion will continue forever, come to a stop, or if the universe will ultimately collapse back into itself. What observational tests are possible to test among these three possibilities?
Q5) Regular atoms did not show up in the universe until when?
Q6) Most astronomers agree to interpret ________ Law to mean that the present day universe is expanding.
Page 17
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