Course Introduction
Planetary Science Question
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Planetary Science explores the origins, evolution, and nature of planets, moons, and other bodies within our solar system and beyond. This course examines planetary formation, surface and atmospheric processes, internal structures, and magnetic fields, drawing upon geology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Students investigate the tools and techniques used in planetary exploration, including telescopic observations and space missions. Current discoveries from NASA and international missions are discussed to provide context on planetary systems' diverse characteristics and the ongoing search for habitable worlds.
Recommended Textbook
Foundations of Astronomy 13th Edition by Michael A. Seeds
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1488 Verified Questions
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Scale of the Cosmos
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Sample Questions
Q1) How are planets and stars different?
A)Planets are larger than stars.
B)Planets reflect light, while stars produce their own light.
C)Stars move across the sky faster than planets.
D)Planets are brighter than stars.
Answer: B
Q2) In the diagram,what is the diameter of Jupiter?
A)about 7.0×10 kilometres
B)about 1.4×10 kilometres
C)about 7.0×10 kilometres
D)about 3.5×10 kilometres
Answer: B
Q3) Which of the following has the distances arranged in order from smallest to largest?
A)kilometre, light year, millimetre, Astronomical Unit
B)Astronomical Unit, millimetre, light year, kilometre
C)millimetre, kilometre, Astronomical Unit, light year
D)light year, kilometre, Astronomical Unit, millimetre
Answer: C
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3
Chapter 2: User's Guide to the Sky
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160 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) If the Moon's orbital plane was aligned with the celestial equator,when would eclipses occur?
A)every month
B)never
C)only at solstices
D)only at the equinoxes
Answer: D
Q2) You point your finger toward the zenith right now,and then point there again six hours later.At both times,your finger was pointing in the same direction relative to one of the options below.Which one?
A)your horizon
B)the Sun
C)the Moon
D)the fixed stars
Answer: A
Q3) Give two reasons why summer days are warmer than winter days.
Answer: Answer not provided.
Q4) Why have more people seen total lunar eclipses than total solar eclipses?
Answer: Answer not provided.
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Chapter 3: The Origin of Modern Astronomy
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Sample Questions
Q1) The force due to gravity has the mathematical form: \( F=-\frac{G M m}{r^{2}} \)
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Which of the following describes the semi-major axis of an ellipse?
A)the ratio of the longest diameter of the ellipse to the shortest diameter of the ellipse
B)half the length of the shortest diameter of the ellipse
C)half the length of the longest diameter of the ellipse
D)the distance between the two foci of the ellipse
Answer: C
Q3) The Ptolemaic model of the universe was heliocentric.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q4) Galileo used a telescope to observe the phases of Jupiter.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 4: Astronomical Telescopes and Instruments
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Sample Questions
Q1) A(n)____________________ telescope has an objective that is a lens.
Q2) What is "false" about false-colour images?
A)They are images created by computer simulations.
B)The colours do not represent the colours humans can see.
C)The colours are exaggerated for visual effect.
D)They are images created by artists, not astronomers.
Q3) What is the outstanding construction feature of the largest single-dish radio telescope?
A)It is suspended on cables in a valley.
B)It is buried deep in a mine underground.
C)It is orbiting in space.
D)It is suspended from balloons in the upper atmosphere.
Q4) What is Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI)?
A)a method to observe the largest possible areas of the sky in radio waves
B)a method to observe the largest wavelength optical light
C)linking optical telescopes in different hemispheres to observe the whole sky
D)linking radio telescopes together electronically to provide very high resolution
Q5) The ____________________ of a telescope is determined by the size of the objective.
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Chapter 5: Sun Light and Sun Atoms
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the diagram,which of the transitions would absorb a photon with the least energy (longest wavelength)?
A)Transition 1
B)Transition 2
C)Transition 3
D)Transition 4
Q2) A recent sunspot maximum occurred in 2001.What is the year of the sunspot maximum that immediately follows the 2001 maximum if the solar cycle continues?
A)2010
B)2012
C)2018
D)2023
Q3) The energy of the first level in an atom is 2.2×10 ¹ J,and the energy of the second energy level is 1.6×10 ¹ J.What is the energy of the photon that is emitted if an electron moves from the second level to the first?
A)3.5×10 ³ J
B)6.0×10 ¹ J
C)3.5×10 ¹ J
D)6.0 ×10 ¹ J
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Page 7
Chapter 6: The Family of Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) How can we be certain that white dwarfs are very small?
Q2) Which are the most common stars,massive stars or low-mass stars (relative to the Sun)? High luminosity or low luminosity (relative to the Sun)?
Q3) What is the most reliable way to measure the mass of a star for which the distance is known?
A)Apply the mass-luminosity relation.
B)Measure its orbit around another star.
C)Measure its radius, then compute its volume and multiply by density to get the mass.
D)Apply the mass-temperature relation.
Q4) Giant stars are members of luminosity class III.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What property do most of the nearest stars in the sky share?
A)They have high temperatures.
B)They are very luminous.
C)They are main-sequence stars.
D)They are red dwarfs.
Q6) The largest of the red stars are the ____________________ stars.
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Chapter 7: The Structure and Formation of Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why do nuclear fusion reactions only take place in the interior of a star?
A)The magnetic fields are strongest there.
B)The temperature and density are highest in the centre.
C)The core is the only place where hydrogen is found.
D)The strong nuclear force is only active in the centres of stars.
Q2) Energy transport by ____________________ is important when photons cannot readily travel through a gas.
Q3) Higher mass stars evolve more slowly to the main sequence than lower mass stars.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How do measurements of neutrinos from the Sun pose a problem for modern astronomy?
Q5) Why does the main sequence have a limit at the lower end?
A)Low mass stars form from the interstellar medium very rarely.
B)Low mass objects are composed primarily of solids, not gases.
C)The lower limit represents a star with zero radius.
D)A minimum temperature is required for hydrogen nuclear fusion to take place.
Q6) T Tauri stars are believed to be young,high mass main-sequence stars.
A)True
B)False
Page 9
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Chapter 8: The Deaths of Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) How fast is the escape velocity at the event horizon around a black hole?
A)slower than the speed of light
B)equal to the speed of light
C)much faster than the speed of light
D)the escape velocity depends on the mass of the black hole
Q2) Cygnus X-1 and LMC X-3 are binary systems with one component not visible.What must the unseen component masses be for astronomers to be certain that these systems contain a black hole?
A)less than 0.4 solar masses
B)between 0.4 and 1.4 solar masses
C)less than 5 solar masses
D)more than 5 solar masses
Q3) The maximum mass of a white dwarf is ____________________ solar masses.
Q4) What is the difference between a planetary nebula and a supernova remnant?
Q5) The ____________________ of a black hole in a binary system can emit X-rays,making it possible for us to detect the presence of the black hole.
Q6) Why do we NOT expect to find a 5 solar mass neutron star?
Q7) What evidence do we have that some stars lose mass?
Q8) If neutron stars contain no nuclear fuel,why are they hot?
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Chapter 9: The Milky Way Galaxy
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Sample Questions
Q1) What kind of orbits did the first stars to form in our galaxy have?
A)circular orbits
B)hyperbolic orbits
C)slightly elliptical orbits, all in the same plane
D)highly elongated elliptical orbits
Q2) The rotation curve of the galaxy provides evidence for the existence of the ____________________ that extends beyond the halo of the galaxy.
Q3) The orbits of halo stars are typically circular and have a low inclination with respect to the disk.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Spiral tracers tend to be old,luminous stars.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Who first calibrated the Cepheid variable stars for use in determining distance?
A)Edwin Hubble
B)Henrietta Leavitt
C)Carl Sagan
D)Harlow Shapley
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Chapter 10: Galaxies
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Sample Questions
Q1) Propose a hypothesis to explain why rich galaxy clusters have a larger proportion of elliptical and S0 galaxies than other galaxy clusters.
Q2) Why should we expect quasars to be small? How small should we expect them to be?
Q3) Poor clusters of galaxies often contain an excess of E and S0 galaxies.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How does the use of H II regions to find a galaxy's distance differ from the use of Cepheid variables?
Q5) What evidence do we have that large galaxies cannibalize small galaxies?
Q6) Elliptical galaxies are primarily made up of massive O and B stars.
A)True
B)False
Q7) What assumptions do we make when we use the Hubble constant to estimate the distance to a galaxy?
Q8) How would you use the Hubble Law to measure the distance to a galaxy?
A)Measure its apparent recession velocity and divide by the age of the universe.
B)Measure its Cepheid variables and multiply by the Hubble constant.
C)Measure its apparent recession velocity and divide by the Hubble constant.
D)Measure its apparent recession velocity and add it to the Hubble constant.
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Chapter 11: Cosmology in the 21st Century
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Sample Questions
Q1) How could the measurement of the Hubble constant at great distances tell us whether the universe is open or closed?
Q2) In 1998,it was announced that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.What does this imply from the perspective of the Big Bang?
A)The acceleration is caused by a previously unknown force.
B)The universe must be closed.
C)The amount of dark matter must be far less than the amount of normal matter.
D)The universe must be infinitely old.
Q3) Imagine three universes that have the same expansion rate and contain no dark energy: an open universe,a closed universe,and a flat universe.The open universe has its expansion slowed down less by the effects of matter than the closed universe or the flat universe does.Based on this,what can you say about the age of the open universe compared to the other two?
A)The open universe will be older than both the flat and closed universes.
B)The open universe will be younger than both the flat and closed universes.
C)All three universes will be the same age.
Q4) How do we know there was a Big Bang?
Q5) A(n)____________________ universe is infinite and would have a density equal to the critical density.
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Chapter 12: The Origin of the Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) Approximately how old are the oldest rocks found on Earth?
A)14 billion years old
B)10.5 billion years old
C)7.0 billion years old
D)4.4 billion years old
Q2) What is the main improvement of the Kepler spacecraft compared to other planet-finding methods?
A)Kepler can detect signs of life on planets.
B)Kepler can detect planets outside the Milky Way.
C)Kepler can detect many more planets.
D)Kepler can detect much smaller planets.
Q3) According to the condensation sequence,what should condense as solids closest to the Sun?
A)hydrogen and helium
B)metals and metal oxides
C)silicates
D)ices of water, methane, and ammonia
Q4) The ____________________ planets have larger radii than the ____________________ planets.
Q5) How did differentiation and outgassing alter protoplanets?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Comparative Planetology of the Terrestrial
Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following planets has the lowest atmospheric pressure?
A)Earth
B)Mars
C)Venus
D)Mercury
Q2) The absence of folded mountain ranges on Mars suggests that it has been subjected to plate tectonics.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The terrestrial planet with the oldest surface is ____________________.
Q4) In contrast to the solid outer mantle,parts of the central regions of the Earth's interior are thought to be fluid.Which of the following supports this idea?
A)P seismic waves cannot pass through those regions.
B)S seismic waves cannot pass through those regions.
C)Neither P nor S seismic waves can pass through those regions.
D)Both P and S seismic waves easily pass through those regions.
Q5) The largest volcano found on one of the terrestrial planets is
Q6) Describe the four stages in the development of a terrestrial planet.
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Chapter 14: Comparative Planetology of the Jovian Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why is Saturn oblate in shape?
A)The gravitational force of its moons flattens the planet.
B)The rapid rotation of the planet flattens it.
C)It formed that way originally and has no way to reshape itself.
D)Its magnetic field pulls the polar regions toward the planet's centre.
Q2) The graph plots the escape velocity of several solar system objects along the vertical axis and the surface temperature along the horizontal.The lines plotted in the figure are the fastest speeds of gas particles as a function of temperature for various gases.Which of the gases plotted in this diagram could be retained by Ganymede?
A)only CO
B)NH and O
C)CO , NH , and O
D)CO and O
Q3) Why do Uranus and Neptune contain no liquid metallic hydrogen?
A)They are not massive enough.
B)They contain mostly helium.
C)They are too far from the Sun.
D)Their magnetic fields are much too weak.
Q4) What do the densities of the moons of Jupiter tell us about their origin?
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Chapter 15: Life on Other Worlds
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Sample Questions
Q1) What wavelengths are used in current searches for extraterrestrial intelligence by radio telescopes?
A)wavelengths that are longer than the local wavelengths emitted by the Earth's atmosphere
B)wavelengths that are longer than the radio wavelength "noise" naturally emitted by our galaxy
C)wavelengths with the greatest speeds
D)the same wavelengths that are used on Earth for TV signals
Q2) Presuming that it takes a few billion years for complex life to evolve in a stable environment,what kind of stars are most likely to currently have inhabited planets?
A)G to K main sequence stars
B)B to A main sequence stars
C)G to K giants
D)white dwarf stars
Q3) DNA molecules cannot be altered by chance errors in reproduction.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the difference between chemical evolution and biological evolution?
Q5) Why must the information in a species' DNA be changeable?
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