Chapter 1-3

The farthest bright galaxies that moderntelescopes are capable of seeing are up to

1. 1 million light yearsaway

2. 10 million lightyears away

3. 1 billion light yearsaway

4. 10 billion lightyears away

5. 1 trillion light yearsaway

Earth is made mostly of metals and rocks.Where did this material come from?

1. It was produced in theBig Bang.

2. It was created bychemical reactions ininterstellar space.

3. It was produced bynuclear fusion in stars.

4. It was made by our Sun.5. It was made by nuclear

fission of uranium andother radioactivematerials

Suppose we look at a photograph of many galaxies.Assuming that all galaxies formed at about the same

time, which galaxy in the picture is the youngest?

1. the one that isfarthest away

2. the one that isreddest in color

3. the one that isbluest in color

4. the one that isclosest to us

5. the one thatappears smallest insize

Our solar system is located inthe center of the Milky Way

Galaxy.1. True2. False

Which of the following statements about thecelestial equator is true at all latitudes?

1. It lies along the band of lightwe call the Milky Way.

2. It represents an extension ofEarth's equator onto thecelestial sphere.

3. It cuts the dome of your localsky exactly in half.

4. It extends from your horizondue east, through your zenith,to your horizon due west.

5. It extends from your horizondue north, through yourzenith, to your horizon duesouth.

If it is midnight in New York,it is

1. daytime in Sydney,Australia.

2. midnight in Sydney,Australia.

3. midnight in LosAngeles.

4. midday in Rio deJaneiro, Brazil.

5. midnight everywhere.

Orion is visible on winter eveningsbut not summer evenings because of

1. interference from thefull moon.

2. the tilt of Earth's axis.3. the location of Earth in

its orbit.4. the precession of

Earth's axis.5. baseball on television.

If the Moon is setting at 6 A.M., thephase of the Moon must be

1. first quarter.2. third quarter.3. full.4. new.5. waning crescent.

At approximately what time would afull moon be on your meridian?

1. 6 A.M.2. 9 A.M.3. noon4. 6 P.M.5. midnight

Which of the following statements aboutthe Moon is true?

1. The Moon goes through acycle of phases because italways has the same sidefacing Earth.

2. If you see a full Moon fromNorth America, someonein South America wouldsee a new moon.

3. The Moon's distance fromEarth varies during itsorbit.

4. The Moon is visible only atnight.

5. The side of the Moonfacing away from Earth isin perpetual darkness.

What effect or effects would be mostsignificant if the Moon's orbital plane were

exactly the same as the ecliptic plane?

1. Solar eclipses wouldbe much rarer.

2. Solar eclipses wouldbe much morefrequent.

3. Total solar eclipseswould last muchlonger.

4. both 1 and 35. both 2 and 3

What happens during the apparentretrograde motion of a planet?

1. The planet rises in the westand sets in the east.

2. The planet appears tomove eastward withrespect to the stars over aperiod of many nights.

3. The planet movesbackward through the sky.

4. The planet movesbackward in its orbitaround the Sun.

5. The planet moves throughconstellations that are notpart of the zodiac.

We can't detect stellar parallax with naked-eyeobservations. Which of the following would

make parallax easier to observe?1. increasing the size of

Earth's orbit2. speeding up Earth's

orbital motion3. slowing down Earth's

orbital motion4. Speeding up the

precession of Earth's axis5. getting away from

streetlights

Why did Ptolemy have the planets orbitingEarth on "circles upon circles" in his model of

the universe?1. to explain why more distant

planets take longer to make acircuit through theconstellations of the zodiac

2. to explain the fact that planetssometimes appear to movewestward, rather thaneastward, relative to the starsin our sky

3. to explain why the Greekswere unable to detect stellarparallax

4. To properly account for thevarying distances of theplanets from Earth

5. To explain why Venus goesthrough phases as seen fromEarth

He developed a system for predictingplanetary positions that remained in use for

some 1,500 years.1. Tycho Brahe2. Copernicus3. Kepler4. Galileo5. Ptolemy

He discovered that the orbitsof planets are ellipses.

1. Tycho Brahe2. Copernicus3. Kepler4. Galileo5. Ptolemy

One of the "nails in the coffin" for theEarth-centered universe was

1. the retrograde motion ofthe planets.

2. the phases of the Moon.3. eclipses of the Sun.4. Galileo's observation of

stars in the Milky Way.5. Galileo's observations of

the moons of Jupiter.