Principles of Astronomy Test Bank
Course Introduction
Principles of Astronomy provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts and phenomena of the universe beyond Earth. This course covers the history and methods of astronomical observation, the structure and dynamics of the solar system, the life cycles of stars, the properties of galaxies, and cosmological theories regarding the origin and evolution of the universe. Emphasis is placed on understanding the physical laws and mathematical principles that govern celestial bodies, as well as recent discoveries and technological advancements in the field. Students will gain a broad overview of astronomy and its role in expanding our perspective of the cosmos.
Recommended Textbook
Astronomy Preliminary Edition by Adam Frank
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Getting Started: Science, astronomy, and Being Human
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Sample Questions
Q1) Science and organized religion:
A) are always at odds.
B) are always in agreement.
C) often share similar motivations.
D) share the same methodology.
Answer: C
Q2) What is the sequence of events in the scientific method,assuming it is working properly and in its simplest form?
Answer: Observation,hypothesis,experiment,confirmation or formulate a new hypothesis.
Q3) Scientists refer to a well-developed body of knowledge that has been tested many times in many different ways as a:
A) hypothesis.
B) framework.
C) theory.
D) truth.
Answer: C
Q4) Identify the base,coefficient,and exponent in the number 4.07 × 10 .
Answer: The base is 10,the coefficient is 4.07,and the exponent is 6.
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Chapter 2: A Universe Made, a Universe Discovered
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Sample Questions
Q1) Suppose that you observe the sky at midnight and see the star Betelgeuse just rising above the eastern horizon.Where will it be at 6 A.M.?
A) at its highest point
B) halfway between the horizon and at its highest point
C) the horizon
D) the opposite side of Earth
Answer: A
Q2) Place the following ancient astronomers in chronological order,from earliest to most recent:
A) Pythagoras, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Aristotle.
B) Pythagoras, Aristotle, Hipparchus, Ptolemy.
C) Aristotle, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Hipparchus.
D) Aristotle, Ptolemy, Hipparchus, Aristotle.
Answer: B
Q3) A scientific model provides a ________ of a natural phenomenon.
A) simplified description
B) testable explanation
C) mathematical treatment
D) physical representation
Answer: B
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Chapter 3: A Universe of Universal Laws
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Sample Questions
Q1) Consider an object on a circular orbit around the Sun.Which of the following quantities remains unchanged throughout the orbit?
A) acceleration
B) speed
C) velocity
D) position
Answer: B
Q2) Which of the following objections to the heliocentric model was Copernicus able to reject through his calculations?
A) the wind from Earth's rotation
B) the stellar parallax
C) the equant
D) the phases of the Moon
Answer: B
Q3) A child's top begins to spin.As it spins,a battery shrinks the top.How does the rate at which the top spins change as it shrinks? What physical principle determines this?
Answer: The top spins faster after it shrinks,thanks to the conservation of angular momentum.
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Chapter 4: A Universe of Universal Laws
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Sample Questions
Q1) An astronomer observes two stars,A and B.Star A has a temperature of 3,000 K,a radius 10 times that of our Sun,and is 10 parsecs away.Star B has a temperature of 6,000 K,a radius equal to that of our Sun,and is 40 parsecs away.Which star is brighter,and by how much?
Q2) A telescope with a diameter of 2 m is just barely able to resolve features on a gas cloud when observing it at 500 nm wavelength.Which of the following observations would also just barely be able to resolve these features?
A) a 1-m diameter telescope observing at 1,000 nm
B) a 4-m diameter telescope observing at 125 nm
C) a 4-m diameter telescope observing at 250 nm
D) a 1-m diameter telescope observing at 250 nm
Q3) Which of the following objects would emit the most radiation?
A) A 1 m2 block of molten iron at 6,000 K.
B) A 0.5 m2 block of molten nickel at 6,000 K.
C) A 2 m2 block of molten iron at 1,500 K.
D) A 6 m2 block of molten nickel at 3,000 K.
Q4) A telescope can barely detect a star situated at 1 kpc from Earth.If an identical star were placed 4 kpc from Earth,how much larger would the radius of the telescope have to be to observe it?
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Chapter 5: The Architecture and Birth of Planetary Systems
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Q1) Astronomers detect a gas giant exoplanet orbiting its host star on an eccentric orbit with a semimajor axis of 100 AU.This provides evidence for:
A) hot Jupiters.
B) eccentric disks.
C) scattering.
D) the snow line.
Q2) A planet orbiting a star with a mass one-quarter that of the Sun has an orbital radius of 1/25 AU.If Earth's orbital velocity is 30 km/s,what is the orbital velocity of this planet?
A) 15 km/s
B) 30 km/s
C) 60 km/s
D) 75 km/s
Q3) Meteoroids can come from:
A) comets.
B) the Moon
C) Mars.
D) all of the above.
Q4) What is a dwarf planet?
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Chapter 6: Home Base: Earth and Moon
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Sample Questions
Q1) A planet is most likely to lose its atmosphere if it:
A) accretes more mass.
B) becomes geologically active.
C) heats up.
D) forms heavy molecules within its atmosphere.
Q2) Why is the Earth-Moon system unique compared to other planet-moon systems in the Solar System?
Q3) Lunar maria formed:
A) near the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment.
B) near the beginning of the Late Heavy Bombardment.
C) near the beginning of the Early Bombardment.
D) during the Moon's formation.
Q4) What kind of tides occur during a lunar eclipse? How do they compare to the average amplitude of tides averaged over a month?
Q5) Suppose that Earth's magnetic poles were along the equator.How would that affect the aurorae,and why?
Q6) Imagine that an earthquake occurs above a massive pool of molten lava.How would this pool affect the propagation of seismic waves?
Q7) What kind of magnet does Earth's magnetic field most closely resemble?
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Sibling Worlds: Mercury, Venus, and Mars
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Q1) Which terrestrial world has the least evidence for volcanism?
A) Mercury
B) Venus
C) Earth
D) Mars
Q2) On Mars,convection is most directly responsible for:
A) seasons.
B) crustal faulting.
C) weather.
D) magnetic fields.
Q3) About one billion years ago,Venus underwent a:
A) runaway greenhouse effect.
B) resurfacing following massive volcanism.
C) massive collision that dramatically slowed its rotation rate.
D) all of the above.
Q4) Which of the following most closely resembles Mercury's surface?
A) the lunar maria
B) the lunar highlands
C) Olympus Mons
D) the Tharsis Bulge
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Chapter 8: Gas, ice, and Stone: the Outer Planets
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Q1) What is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System?
A) Venus
B) Earth
C) Io
D) Titan
Q2) The Roche limit is the:
A) inner edge of the Kuiper Belt.
B) distance at which tides destroy an orbiting object.
C) maximum size of a white dwarf.
D) maximum size of a main sequence star.
Q3) What is the composition of the thickest layer of Jupiter?
A) rocky and metallic material
B) liquid metallic hydrogen
C) liquid molecular hydrogen
D) gaseous molecular hydrogen
Q4) What aspect of Jupiter's near-space environment poses the biggest problem for satellites orbiting the planet?
Q5) What is the strongest evidence for liquid water on Callisto?
Q6) Why does a moon in a 2:1 orbital resonance with a planetary ring have such strong influence on it?
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Chapter 9: Life and the Search for Habitable Worlds
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Q1) According to present understanding,what were the first self-replicating molecules to form on Earth?
A) amino acids
B) DNA
C) RNA polymers
D) RNA monomers
Q2) How does the greenhouse effect change the habitability zone of a star?
A) It narrows the zone.
B) It does not affect the zone.
C) It moves the zone inward.
D) It moves the zone outward.
Q3) A colleague explains to you that the origin of life seems implausible given that producing the 192-nucleotide self-replicating RNA in our bodies would require longer than the age of the universe if created from scratch in random chemical reactions.How could you answer this objection?
Q4) What is the "cosmic watering hole"?
Q5) What is the most important process in driving evolutionary adaptation?
Q6) What is one potential resolution to Fermi's paradox,if intelligent extraterrestrial life does exist?
Page 11
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Chapter 10: The Sun As a Star
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Q1) A large nucleus A has a smaller binding energy than a less massive nucleus B.Which of the following reactions could happen?
A) B could undergo a fission reaction to produce A, releasing energy.
B) A could undergo a fusion reaction to produce B, releasing energy.
C) B could undergo a fusion reaction to produce A, releasing energy.
D) A could undergo a fission reaction to produce B, releasing energy.
Q2) Which of the following is NOT related to the solar magnetic cycle?
A) the number of sunspots
B) space weather
C) the solar neutrino problem
D) the strength of Earth's aurorae
Q3) A star loses one billion kilograms of material per second as it fuses hydrogen to helium.Approximately how much energy does the star produce each second?
A) 9 × 10<sup>25</sup> joules
B) 3 × 10<sup>25</sup> joules
C) 4 × 10<sup>26</sup> joules
D) 3 × 10<sup>31</sup> joules
Q4) Why does fusion occur only at the center of the Sun?
Q5) What provides the energy for solar flares?
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Chapter 11: Measuring the Stars: the Main Sequence and Its Meaning
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Q1) Star A has an apparent magnitude of 5,while star B has an apparent magnitude of 10.If star A is twice as far from Earth as star B,how do the luminosities of the two stars compare?
Q2) If a star is so large that it cannot be resolved by a telescope on (or near)Earth,what quantities must you measure to determine its radius?
Q3) Two stars orbit each other on circular orbits.The star with the larger orbital radius has a:
A) larger orbital period.
B) smaller mass.
C) smaller orbital speed.
D) smaller orbital period.
Q4) Massive stars:
A) burn their fuel rapidly, so they have shorter lifetimes than low-mass stars.
B) have large fuel supplies, so they have longer lifetimes than low-mass stars.
C) use the efficient CNO cycle, so they have longer lifetimes than low-mass stars.
D) burn more elements, so they have longer lifetimes than low-mass stars.
Q5) How does the inclination of a spectroscopic binary star system's orbit affect astronomers' mass estimates of the stars?
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Nursery of the Stars: the Interstellar Medium and Star Formation
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Q1) A protostar forming without magnetic fields will most likely lack:
A) a molecular outflow.
B) an accretion disk.
C) an envelope.
D) the conditions necessary for fusion.
Q2) Which of the following is most strongly affected by interstellar dust?
A) infrared light
B) visible light
C) microwaves
D) radio waves
Q3) Where do high-mass stars form?
A) in massive clumps
B) in small, isolated clumps
C) in binary systems
D) in globular clusters
Q4) According to most astronomers,what two factors are necessary to launch a protostellar jet?
Q5) What are two reasons that molecules are so abundant within giant molecular clouds?
Q6) What does it mean for a giant molecular cloud to have a hierarchy of structures? Page 14
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Chapter 13: To the Graveyard of Stars: the End Points of
Stellar Evolution
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Q1) A star begins its time on the main sequence with 10 solar masses.As it enters the red giant phase,it transfers 5 solar masses to a binary companion.How will the star end its life?
Q2) As a star moves along the red giant branch,how does it move on the HR diagram?
A) It does not move.
B) downward and to the left
C) upward and to the left
D) upward and to the right
Q3) When electrons are squeezed closer together,they obtain a wide range of velocities.What physical principle does this reflect?
Q4) Why do asymptotic giant branch stars have powerful winds?
A) Dust forming in the star's envelope is opaque to its radiation.
B) Mass is lost during each of the star's pulsations.
C) The loss of fusion energy in the star's core means that the outer layers are no longer gravitationally bound.
D) The outer layers become too hot to be gravitationally bound.
Q5) During part of its time as a red giant,a star remains at roughly the same temperature but increases in luminosity by a factor of 1,000.By what factor does its radius increase?
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Chapter 14: Down the Rabbit Hole: Relativity and Black Holes
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Sample Questions
Q1) What kind of stars are most likely to form black holes?
A) stars that can only initiate hydrogen and helium fusion
B) stars with low-mass cores
C) stars with masses greater than 30 MSun
D) stars with an overabundance of heavy elements
Q2) What stops the collapse of the most massive stars at the end of their lives?
A) nothing
B) electron degeneracy pressure
C) neutron degeneracy pressure
D) gamma-ray bursts
Q3) In which wavelength range is material falling into stellar-mass black holes most likely to be detected?
A) optical
B) X-ray
C) infrared
D) none; they do not emit light
Q4) What are the two fundamental postulates of special relativity?
Q5) What are the three observable properties of black holes?
Page 17
Q6) How would Earth's orbit change if the Sun suddenly collapsed into a black hole (with the same mass as it currently has)?
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Chapter 15: Our City of Stars: the Milky Way
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Q1) Why might it be surprising that the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is not luminous?
Q2) Which of the following is present near the center of the Milky Way?
A) a supermassive black hole
B) an absence of luminous stars
C) an active galactic nucleus
D) a bright ultraviolet source on the night sky
Q3) What does the distribution of gas and dust in the Milky Way tell us about the relative ages of the disk and stellar halo?
Q4) How does the stellar population within a few parsecs of the galactic center differ from the rest of the bulge?
A) It is made up of more massive stars.
B) It is made up of redder stars.
C) It is made up of lower metallicity stars.
D) It is made up of stars with slower orbital velocities.
Q5) What is the "conundrum of old age" to an astronomer?
Q6) What is a WIMP?
Q7) Why is the metallicity of Population I stars greater than that of Population II stars?
Page 19
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Chapter 16: A Universe of Galaxies
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Q1) A low-mass galaxy is situated 10 kiloparsecs from a flocculent spiral galaxy.Which of the following is most likely to describe the low-mass galaxy?
A) irregular
B) spiral
C) barred spiral
D) elliptical
Q2) Why is it important for astronomers to find galaxies with Type Ia supernova and Cepheid variables?
Q3) Contrast spiral and elliptical galaxies in terms of their color,gas content,and orbital properties.
Q4) An astronomer discovers a galaxy with unusually broad emission lines.What is the most likely source of these lines?
Q5) A galaxy with a total mass of 10 M<sub>Sun</sub> is most likely to be:
A) a spiral.
B) a barred spiral.
C) a dwarf elliptical.
D) a lenticular.
Q6) Which cosmic distance measurement techniques rely on the observation of standard candles?
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Chapter 17: The Cosmic Web: the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
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Q1) Why are neutrinos NOT a good candidate for cold dark matter?
A) They move too fast.
B) They interact with matter too strongly.
C) They are formed in normal nuclear reactions.
D) They oscillate between different types.
Q2) An astronomer discovers a region of space in which all the galaxies have peculiar motions away from a central point.This region is:
A) a void.
B) a filament.
C) a supercluster.
D) fully explained by the Hubble flow.
Q3) What does it mean when astronomers say that dark matter is "cold"?
A) It moves slowly.
B) It clumps.
C) It cannot undergo nuclear reactions.
D) It does not emit visible light.
Q4) Why did the first generation of stars to form in the Universe differ from those in the Milky Way?
Page 21
Q5) Why are distant galaxies' spectra redshifted?
Q6) Why do astronomers refer to the Dark Ages as "dark"?
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Chapter 18: Cosmology
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Q1) In the early history of the Universe,an unstable quantum field decayed to its ground state.How did this affect the Universe?
Q2) To what accuracy are the relative densities of dark energy and dark matter known,according to current cosmological measurements?
A) to 1 part in 10,000
B) to 1 part in 100
C) within a factor of 2
D) to an order of magnitude
Q3) What is goal of cosmology?
Q4) How does inflation solve the paradox of universal uniformity?
A) It separates nearby parts of the Universe very rapidly.
B) It allows electromagnetic waves to travel faster than the speed of light.
C) It removes any fluctuations from the Universe.
D) It forces special relativity to be true.
Q5) Which of the following correctly characterizes the composition of our Universe?
A) 5 percent normal matter, 68 percent dark matter, 27 percent dark energy
B) 27 percent normal matter, 5 percent dark matter, 68 percent dark energy
C) 5 percent normal matter, 27 percent dark matter, 68 percent dark energy
D) 27 percent normal matter, 68 percent dark matter, 5 percent dark energy
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