Universe and Cosmology Exam Review
Course Introduction
Universe and Cosmology explores the fundamental nature, structure, and evolution of the universe. This course introduces students to the basic principles of cosmology, including the Big Bang theory, cosmic inflation, dark matter, dark energy, and the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Students will examine observational evidence from telescopes and satellites, learn about galaxies, black holes, and the life cycles of stars, and discuss the fate of the universe. Emphasis is placed on the scientific methods used to investigate the cosmos and current issues and discoveries in astronomical research.
Recommended Textbook
Astronomy The Universe at a Glance 1st Edition by Eric Chaisson
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15 Chapters
1442 Verified Questions
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Chapter 1: The Night Sky
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Sample Questions
Q1) The first quarter Moon will rise about noon, and set about midnight.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) The place the Sun stops its northward motion along the ecliptic is the A) equator.
B) prime meridian.
C) summer solstice.
D) vernal equinox.
Answer: C
Q3) A light-year is a measurement of time.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q4) No one knew that the Earth was round (spherical) until the 1500s, when explorers such as Magellan sailed around the world.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Light and Telescopes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Stars that appear blue or white in color are ________ than our yellow Sun.
Answer: hotter
Q2) Why do gamma ray telescopes have poor angular resolution?
Answer: Because scientists have not yet developed a way to focus these.
Q3) In addition to visible light, Hubble can do some work in the infrared and ultraviolet portions of the spectrum.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) Advantages of radio astronomy include
A) radio waves are not scattered or deflected by Earth's atmosphere.
B) radio observations can be made even when the Sun is in the sky.
C) radio observations can be made even when the sky is obscured by clouds.
D) radio observations let astronomers study things that emit little visible light.
E) all of the above.
Answer: E
Q5) The longer the wavelength of the photon, the ________ the energy it carries.
Answer: lower
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Chapter 3: The Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) How do the densities of the jovian and terrestrial planets compare?
A) Made from the same solar nebula, they are all similar.
B) More massive jovians all have high densities, compared to the tiny terrestrials.
C) All terrestrials are more dense than any of the jovians.
D) The closer a planet lies to the Sun, the less its density.
E) No real pattern here; densities vary greatly and are very individual to each world.
Answer: C
Q2) Mercury, with a higher eccentricity orbit, should change its orbital speed more than do Venus or Earth.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) Explain how Copernicus would account for the retrograde loops of superior planets.
Answer: The Earth moves faster than these outer worlds, so at opposition we overtake them and as we sweep past them, they appear to retreat westward for a few weeks.
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Chapter 4: Earth and Its Moon
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the past, most of the landmass on Earth was concentrated in a single, large continent.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Where is the newest material in the Earth's crust found?
Q3) What were the two primary courses of heating that let the Earth differentiate? Which is more important to us today?
Q4) What are some of the consequences that could happen if the average global temperature increases by 5 Kelvin, as predicted if the carbon dioxides continue to rise at the current rate?
Q5) The three most abundant gases in our atmosphere are nitrogen, oxygen, and argon.
A)True
B)False
Q6) The crust of the Earth is covered by about ________ water in the hydrosphere.
A) 50%
B) 60%
C) 70%
D) 80%
E) 90%
Q7) Name two consequences of the Earth's magnetic field detected from space.
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Chapter 5: The Eight Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Great Dark Spot on Neptune is probably as stable as Jupiter's famed Great Red Spot.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Compare and contrast the magnetospheres of Earth and Jupiter. Discuss strength and reaction to solar winds.
Q3) What element is notably deficient in Saturn's atmosphere, and why?
Q4) Mars has a weak magnetic field.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Mercury's surface most resembles that of which other body?
A) Earth
B) Moon
C) Venus
D) Mars
E) Io
Q6) Uranus' rotation axis is tipped over 98 degrees, so its magnetosphere is tipped over the same amount.
A)True
B)False
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Small Bodies in the Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the origin of the jovian moons?
A) They all formed with the planet.
B) They were main belt asteroids, captured by Jupiter's strong gravity.
C) They are Trojan asteroids, orbiting 60 degrees ahead or behind Jupiter.
D) The four Galilean moons formed with Jupiter, most others were later captures.
E) They were ripped from the planet's interior in an early cataclysmic event.
Q2) Pluto is visible to the naked eye on extremely dark nights.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The moon with an atmosphere denser than ours is ________.
Q4) What mission landed on Titan in early 2005?
A) Galileo's probe
B) Huygens
C) New Horizons
D) Rover Spirit
E) Cassini orbiter
Q5) The Galileo spacecraft showed that volcanic features on Io could change in ________.
Q6) Neptune's moon Triton appears to have a nearly uncratered surface. Explain.
Q7) What will happen to Triton in the distant future, based on its present orbit?
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Chapter 7: Formation of Planetary Systems
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Sample Questions
Q1) Any model of solar system formation must explain why terrestrial planets and jovian planets formed differently.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Most extrasolar Neptunes and Jupiters found to date have
A) orbits very close to their parent stars, making them hot Neptunes and hot Jupiters.
B) orbits that are more eccentric than those of planets in our solar system, with eccentricities greater than 0.1
C) orbits that are less eccentric than those of planets in our solar system, with eccentricities less than 0.01.
D) much larger orbits than the jovian planets in our solar system.
Q3) As the solar nebula contracts due to gravitation, the cloud
A) spins faster.
B) expands.
C) becomes more spherical in shape.
D) changes direction of motion.
E) begins to cool.
Q4) Why are infrared observations useful when observing extrasolar planets?
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Chapter 8: The Sun
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Sample Questions
Q1) The above diagram indicates that
A) the Sun is hottest somewhere between its surface and its core.
B) the Sun is coolest somewhere between its surface and its core.
C) the Sun is hotter at its surface than at its core.
D) the Sun is hotter at its core than at its surface.
E) the Sun has about the same temperature throughout its interior.
Q2) By what mechanism does solar energy reach the Sun's photosphere from the layer just underneath it?
A) Differentiation
B) Ionization
C) Radiation
D) Convection
E) Conduction
Q3) While observing the Sun, you note a large number of sunspots. What can you conclude?
A) The Sun is less luminous than usual.
B) This is a period of low solar activity.
C) Earth's climate will be unusually cold.
D) The Sun's rotation is slower than average.
E) There are likely to be an above average number of flares and prominences.
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Chapter 9: Measuring the Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) What physical property of a star does the spectral type measure?
A) Density
B) Luminosity
C) Temperature
D) Mass
E) Composition
Q2) In general, the narrower the spectral line of a star
A) the hotter the star is.
B) the bigger the star is.
C) the denser the star is.
D) the smaller the star is.
E) the cooler the star is.
Q3) If a star appears to move relative to other stars over a one-year 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.
Q4) All classes of binary stars yield the basic information on stellar ________.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Star Formation and Evolution
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Sample Questions
Q1) Contrast the brightest stars of young open and old globular clusters.
Q2) Contrast the chemical composition of interstellar gas with that of interstellar dust.
Q3) The spectra of interstellar gas clouds show that they have the same basic composition as
A) interstellar dust.
B) Earth's atmosphere.
C) stars.
D) asteroids.
E) the Martian polar caps.
Q4) In an H-R Diagram, the path showing changes in a star's luminosity and surface temperature as a function of time is called its ________.
Q5) Modern astronomers have observed the complete life cycle for many stars, making stellar evolution one of the best-tested astronomical theories.
A)True
B)False
Q6) 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.
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Chapter 11: Stellar Explosions
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Sample Questions
Q1) The iron we commonly find in our surroundings came from
A) the iron core of a massive star which exploded as a type I supernova.
B) planetary nebulae.
C) jets ejected by a rapidly spinning pulsar.
D) material ejected by a nova explosion.
E) decay of nickel 56 and cobalt 56 in a supernova remnant.
Q2) 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.
Q3) Neutron stars have
A) very strong bi-polar magnetic fields.
B) weak or non-existent magnetic fields.
C) periods of days or weeks.
D) monopolar fields that switch polarity every rotation.
E) no relation to pulsars.
Q4) A gamma-ray burster emits a quantity of energy similar to that emitted in a
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Chapter 12: Black Holes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Special relativity says that c, the speed of light, is the maximum velocity for both matter and energy in our universe.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What explanation does general relativity provide for gravity?
A) Gravity is the result of curved spacetime.
B) Gravity is directly proportional to the mass of the attracting body.
C) Gravity is inversely proportion to the radius of the body.
D) Gravity is the opposite of the electromagnetic force.
E) Gravity can affect only massive particles, not massless photons.
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.
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Chapter 13: The Milky Way Galaxy
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why do astronomers believe that there is a large black hole, around 4 million times the mass of our Sun, in the Galactic center?
Q2) How old is the Galaxy? How do we know this?
Q3) Although astronomers refer to the Galaxy's disk as rotating, the motion is really due to the ________ motion of each of the objects in the disk.
Q4) Why do we believe there is dark matter?
Q5) Stars in the Galactic disk came billions of years before stars in the Galactic halo.
A)True
B)False
Q6) We can estimate the mass of the Galaxy from observations of its ________ curve.
Q7) Which of the following is most like the rotation of stars in the disk of the Milky Way?
A) A DVD in a player
B) The planets in our solar system
C) Cars moving at a constant speed on a circular race track
D) The hands of an analog clock
E) The tire of a car moving
Q8) Our solar system is in the Galactic ________ of the Milky Way Galaxy.
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Chapter 14: Galaxies
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which type of galaxy has a small bulge and loose, widely spread, poorly defined spiral pattern?
A) SO
B) S9
C) Sa
D) Sc
E) SBw
Q2) Giant elliptical galaxies may be the result of ________ in the centers of rich clusters.
Q3) What type of galaxy are the two Magellanic Clouds? How do we know this visually?
Q4) Distinguish an Sa from an Sc galaxy.
Q5) The Milky Way is often considered to be an intermediately wound, barred spiral, which would be type
A) E4.
B) Sa.
C) SBb.
D) SBV.
E) B2S.
Q6) Relate black holes in the early galaxies to quasars.
Q7) Why do some radio galaxies appear to have lobes while some do not.
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Chapter 15: Cosmology and the Universe
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Sample Questions
Q1) Discounting the newly discovered role of dark energy, the universe we live in now is said to be ________ dominated.
Q2) What factors would determine that we live in a matter-dominated universe?
Q3) How does the energy of the cosmic microwave background compare to the energy radiated by all the stars and galaxies that ever existed?
A) They are very close to being equal.
B) 73% cosmic background, 27% starlight
C) About ten times more from the Big Bang than from stars and galaxies
D) The starlight now dominates the background, as your eyes show clearly.
E) We have no way of comparing matter and energy this way.
Q4) 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.
Q5) The low density universe is an open one, with expansion continuing forever.
A)True
B)False
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