Introduction to Astronomy
Midterm Exam
Course Introduction
Introduction to Astronomy offers students a comprehensive overview of the universe, exploring fundamental concepts such as the formation and lifecycle of stars, the structure and dynamics of galaxies, and the origin of the solar system. Through the study of celestial objects, astronomical phenomena, and observational techniques, students develop an understanding of key scientific principles that govern the cosmos. The course also discusses the historical development of astronomy as a science, contemporary advances and discoveries, and the impact of space exploration on our knowledge of the universe. Designed for students with no prior background in science, this course encourages curiosity and critical thinking about our place in the universe.
Recommended Textbook
Astronomy The Universe at a Glance 1st Edition by Eric Chaisson
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15 Chapters
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Chapter 1: The Night Sky
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Sample Questions
Q1) The distances to other stars are best measured in ________.
Answer: light-years
Q2) What are constellations?
A) Groups of galaxies gravitationally bound and close together in the sky
B) Groups of stars making an apparent pattern in the celestial sphere
C) Groups of stars gravitationally bound and appearing close together in the sky
D) Ancient story boards, useless to modern astronomers
E) Apparent groupings of stars and planets visible on a given evening
Answer: B
Q3) What are some observable consequences of the Earth's revolution around the Sun in relation to the zodiacal constellations?
Answer: Month by month, our revolution causes the Sun to appear to move eastward by about a degree per day, or through a new sign of the zodiac every month.
Q4) Why can many more people witness a total lunar eclipse than a total solar eclipse?
Answer: For a total solar eclipse to be seen, the observer must be in the Moon's umbra, a shadow only about a hundred miles across, while everyone on the night side of the Earth can look up to witness the full Moon moving though our shadow.
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Chapter 2: Light and Telescopes
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Sample Questions
Q1) To see the Sun's hot corona (a temperature of 1,000,000 K), which part of the electromagnetic spectrum should one observe?
A) The visible
B) The X-ray
C) The ultraviolet
D) The radio
E) The infrared
Answer: B
Q2) Molecular spectra, like elemental ones, involve only the vibration of the particles.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) The Doppler Effect is a phenomenon that allows one to measure an object's A) temperature.
B) radius.
C) line-of-sight speed.
D) chemical composition.
Answer: C
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Chapter 3: The Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) What did Galileo discover when looking at the Sun with his telescope, and how did this support Copernicus?
Answer: Sunspots, which rotated across the Sun's face, showing that the Sun was not perfect and it (and Earth) could rotate on its axis.
Q2) Newton's modification of Kepler's Third Law lets us measure the mass of the Sun.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) To explain retrograde motion as well as changes in planetary brightness, Ptolemy's model used ________.
Answer: epicycles
Q4) How did Ptolemy explain the retrograde motion of Mars?
Answer: Mars will retrograde on the inner portion of its epicycle, when it is closest to us and its motion on the epicycle is more obvious than its motion along its deferent.
Q5) Galileo's observations of the phases of ________ could not be explained by Ptolemy's epicyclic model.
Answer: Venus
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Chapter 4: Earth and Its Moon
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Q1) Why did the Moon's internal heat escape more rapidly than Earth's?
Q2) What layers of the Earth's structure are not present in the Moon's structure?
Q3) When strong solar winds are displaced poleward by our magnetic fields, we get
A) the Van Allen radiation belts.
B) intense auroral displays.
C) sunspots.
D) hurricanes in the tropics.
E) droughts and dust bowls in the American West.
Q4) Without greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the Earth's oceans would not be liquid.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Which lunar feature most resembles the Moon's original crust?
A) Valleys
B) Craters
C) Maria
D) Bright rays
E) Highlands
Q6) List the six main regions of the Earth, in order, starting from the center.
Q7) The partial trapping of solar radiation is known as the ________.
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Chapter 5: The Eight Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Contrast the compositions of Jupiter's belts and zones.
Q2) How does Mercury's magnetic field compare to our own?
A) Like Venus, Mercury has no detectable magnetic field.
B) Like Mars and the Earth, it too has undergone polarity reversals.
C) It is much weaker than Earth's, but does deflect the solar wind to some degree.
D) It is amazingly strong, comparable to our own.
E) It was predicted from Mercury's rapid rotation and molten core.
Q3) What is thought to lie at the center of Jupiter?
A) A hot sea of liquid metallic hydrogen
B) A solid core of crystalline helium
C) A massive core of rocky materials with some iron mixed in
D) Gaseous hydrogen and helium, for Jupiter is not differentiated like Earth
E) A fusion core like the Sun's, with hydrogen being turned into helium
Q4) What is the evidence that suggests the past and present existence of surface water on Mars?
Q5) The apparent "surface" of Jupiter is actually the tops of ________.
Q6) Discuss the role that methane plays in the appearances of Neptune and Uranus.
Q7) Saturn's cloud layers are thicker than Jupiter's, due to Saturn's ________ gravity.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Small Bodies in the Solar System
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Q1) Which of the following played the most important role in the ring's formation?
A) Saturn's differential rotation
B) Saturn's Roche limit
C) Saturn's distance from the Sun
D) Debris from volcanoes on Mimas
E) Tidal resonance with Titan
Q2) The average density of the planet Jupiter has been known for hundreds of years, but the densities of its Galilean moons were only determined accurately from data obtained during the Voyager by-pass missions. Why?
Q3) What makes Mimas a distinct moon?
A) It suffered a huge meteorite impact that must have nearly shattered it.
B) It helps maintain a wide apparent gap in Saturn's rings, known as Encke's Division.
C) It has a rich atmosphere that may resemble that of the early Earth.
D) It is the largest of Saturn's moons.
E) The leading hemisphere is very dark, while the back side is bright ice.
Q4) What is a planet's Roche limit?
Q5) The moons of Uranus are darker than those of Saturn, due to ________.
Q6) Io's "pizza pie" colors come from eruptions of ________ and its compounds.
Q7) Why do Saturn's rings exist?
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Formation of Planetary Systems
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Sample Questions
Q1) All planets revolve around the Sun counterclockwise, and most also rotate on their axis counterclockwise.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Explain the stage in which the solar system formed pretty much in a plane.
Q3) Why are infrared observations useful when observing extrasolar planets?
Q4) Different temperatures within the solar nebula ultimately determined the compositions of the planets and their moons.
A)True
B)False
Q5) A successful theory of the formation of the solar system must explain
A) that all planets rotate in a prograde sense.
B) that all planets have elliptical orbits with high eccentricities.
C) the existence of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Neptune.
D) that the inner planets have more hydrogen and helium in their atmospheres than do the outer planets.
E) all observed properties of the solar system.
Q6) The Kuiper Belt is located beyond the orbit of ________.
Q7) The Kepler mission uses the ________ technique to detect exoplanets.
Page 9
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Chapter 8: The Sun
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Sample Questions
Q1) From where does most of the solar wind flow?
A) Granules
B) Sunspots
C) Flares
D) Prominences
E) Coronal holes
Q2) Explain what is meant by the solar cycle. What role does magnetism play?
Q3) The Sun is a fairly normal star.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Suppose a large flare is detected optically. How long until radio interference arrives?
A) Simultaneously
B) 8.5 minutes later
C) About 12 hours
D) About four days
E) No relation between the two
Q5) Sunspots are only about 2,000 K cooler than the much brighter photosphere.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: Measuring the Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) Procyon lies about 13 light-years distant, thus its parallax is about
A) 0.01".
B) 0.25".
C) 0.40".
D) 0.65".
E) 1.3".
Q2) In a spectroscopic binary, if a pair shows a combined set of lines tonight, but a maximum split two nights later, its orbital period must be
A) one day.
B) two days.
C) four days.
D) eight days.
E) twelve days.
Q3) Explain how the shifting spectral lines of spectroscopic binaries let us find their periods.
Q4) The vast majority of stars near us would fall to the bottom right on the H-R diagram.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is proper motion? How is it related to transverse velocity?
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Chapter 10: Star Formation and Evolution
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Sample Questions
Q1) A solar mass star will evolve off the main sequence when
A) it completely runs out of hydrogen.
B) it expels a planetary nebula to cool off and release radiation.
C) it explodes as a violent nova.
D) it builds up a core of inert helium.
E) it loses all its neutrinos, so fusion must cease.
Q2) Why can radio waves get through the dust clouds, but light is blocked?
Q3) The birth of stars is a battle between gravity and radiation pressure.
A)True
B)False
Q4) 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.
Q5) A protostar develops a bipolar flow of gas when it is still surrounded by an equatorial disk of ________.
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Stellar Explosions
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Q1) What is stellar nucleosynthesis?
A) The formation of heavier elements inside stars
B) The formation of planetary nebulae by red giants
C) The formation of stars from a nucleus of contracting material
D) The formation of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes from stars
E) The process by which stars form interstellar dust
Q2) What is the reason a type-I supernova slows its dimming after about 2 months?
A) The planetary nebula cooled enough to form a dust shell.
B) Energy is released from the decay of radioactive cobalt 56 to iron 56.
C) The supernova remnant suddenly becomes transparent.
D) The burst of energy carried by neutrinos is finally observed.
E) Energy from the supernova's shock wave is released as it hits interstellar matter.
Q3) In a nova, there is a white dwarf, an evolving companion star, and a(n) ________ surrounding the white dwarf's equator.
Q4) What would be most likely to disrupt the normal evolution of a star? Give examples of this.
Q5) A Type I supernova involves the collapsing core of a high mass star.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 12: Black Holes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Explain how the essential features of special relativity imply that a beam of light from a fast moving spaceship will always be observed to moving at the speed of light.
Q2) The current theories of gravity are ________ because they do not incorporate a proper description of matter on the smallest scale.
Q3) If you were to fall into a black hole, the ________ would kill you by tearing you apart.
Q4) According to general relativity, objects moved on curved paths due to the force of gravity.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Which of the following can actually escape from inside a black hole's event horizon?
A) Neutrinos
B) Electrons
C) Very high energy gamma-rays
D) Protons
E) None of the above
Q6) Why is the light from near a black hole redshifted?
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Chapter 13: The Milky Way Galaxy
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Sample Questions
Q1) The location of the Galactic center was first found by Harlow Shapley with A) radio emissions from Sagittarius A.
B) Cepheids of population I in the spiral arms.
C) RR Lyrae variables in the globular clusters.
D) planetary nebulae in the open clusters.
E) infrared observations of the heat from its accretion disk around the black hole.
Q2) Star formation ceased first in the A) nucleus.
B) spiral arms.
C) bulge.
D) halo.
E) Galactic disk.
Q3) From Earth, the view of the Milky Way is a thin band of stars across the night sky. The part of the Milky Way galaxy that is described here is the A) bulge.
B) spiral arm.
C) disk.
D) halo.
E) globular cluster.
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Chapter 14: Galaxies
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Sample Questions
Q1) While examining the spectrum of a galaxy you find all the hydrogen lines are shifted to longer wavelengths. This galaxy is
A) moving away from us.
B) moving towards us.
C) expanding explosively.
D) blue shifted.
E) not forming new stars.
Q2) 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.
Q3) The pregalactic blobs had masses similar to A) the earth.
B) the Sun.
C) globular clusters.
D) the Large Magellanic Cloud.
E) the Milky Way.
Q4) How can some mergers activate spirals, and others destroy them?
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Cosmology and the Universe
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Sample Questions
Q1) The cosmological redshift is actually not a velocity at all, but a measure of the expansion of space-time.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The luminous matter in the universe accounts for what percent of the total mass of the universe?
A) About 5%
B) About 23%
C) About 27%
D) About 73%
E) 100%
Q3) The universe was two minutes old when ________ started to form from deuterium fusion.
Q4) The cosmological principle calls for the distribution of galaxies to be homogeneous. On the large scale, is this true?
Q5) Discounting the newly discovered role of dark energy, the universe we live in now is said to be ________ dominated.
Q6) How does dark energy affect the expansion of the Universe?
Q7) Describe the separation of the superforce and the effect it had on the Universe.
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