The pulses from a pulsar are most likely coming from localized areas near the magnetic
poles.
At the solstices, the Sun’s declination will be 23.5 degrees from the equator.
Galaxies are moving away from us and into the vast, empty space of the outer universe
beyond the Big Bang.
The less internal heat a jovian planet emits, the more it stirs up its clouds.
The helium flash stage lasts several thousand years.
The Earth and Moon always keep the same side towards each other.
As their name implies, all planetary nebulae feature spherical shells and look like the
disks of Uranus or Neptune.
Hubble’s law implies that, at some time in the past, all the matter in the universe was at
one place.
Hubble found a direct relation between a galaxy’s velocity and distance.
Centaurus A, with two large radio lobes, is an active galaxy.
CCD detectors gather light 10-20 times faster than the most sensitive photographic film.
The solar corona is best studied using X-ray telescopes.
The horizon problem relates to the isotropy of the microwave background radiation.
Because of their immense size, black holes moving through space consume huge
quantities of interstellar matter along their paths.
Unlike spirals, elliptical galaxies do not contain a flattened disk.
The solar constant refers to that fact that the Sun’s luminosity has remained unchanged
in the age of the solar system.
Optical telescopes are usually used only at night, but radio telescopes can be used day
or night.
The Cassegrain reflector needs a primary concave main mirror and a smaller, convex
secondary mirror to reflect light back through a hole in the primary.
The zonal flows giving rise to the belts and zones are similar to the jet streams in our
own stratosphere.
While luminous enough to be seen with the naked eye, Supernova 1987A was, in fact,
in our companion galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Mercury has an unusually small core.
There is presently no evidence for large-scale structure bigger than about 200 Mpc.
No planets have ever been found around any pulsars.
You would perceive a change in a visible light wave’s amplitude as a change in its color.
Harlow Shapley mapped the Milky Way using the period-luminosity relationship for
RR Lyrae stars.
Based on our current knowledge of the motions of Uranus and Neptune, it is obvious
that Pluto’s discovery was a triumph of physics, on par with Adams and Leverrier’s
work in finding Neptune.
Solar neutrinos take a little more than eight hours to get from the Sun’s core to Earth.
Quasars are far enough away that we must take the relativistic redshift into account
when calculating their age.
A typical star burns helium for about the same amount of time it burns hydrogen.
Both space and time are warped near the strong gravitational fields of neutron stars and
black holes.
Dark nebulae are opaque to all wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.
It would be very unlikely to find a massive, young star out in the halo.
Mars has larger volcanoes than Earth’s Hawaii.
Between us and the Galactic Center lie about 100 billion solar masses.
According to Newton’s second law, if you double the force acting on a body, the
acceleration will double.
Which of these is not a result of plate tectonics?
A) the Grand Canyon
B) the Andes
C) the Mid-Atlantic Rift
D) the San Andreas Fault
E) the Philippine Trench
Adding a secondary concave lens of carefully chosen different glass to the primary lens
on a refractor allows
A) chromatic aberration to be reduced.
B) X-rays to be focused.
C) effects of atmospheric turbulence to be reduced.
D) greater magnification.
E) more light to be gathered.
Which of these is not typical of the Galaxy’s spiral arms?
A) hot, young blue Population I stars
B) emission nebulae like M42
C) O and B stars
D) open clusters
E) Population II giants like orange Arcturus
What is true of Jupiter’s magnetosphere?
A) Although its surface field is greater, since the planet is larger the total field is
actually weaker than Earth’s.
B) It does not trap protons and electrons, as Earth’s Van Allen belts do.
C) It has a tail that extends at least to Saturn’s orbit.
D) It is most extensive on the sunward side of the planet.
E) It is only slightly stronger than Saturn’s.
The region in which charged particles are trapped by our magnetic fields is the
A) ionosphere.
B) ozone layers.
C) exosphere.
D) Van Allen radiation belt.
E) Aurora.
Pluto was discovered in
A) ancient times.
B) 1789.
C) 1859.
D) 1930.
E) 1992.
A surface explosion on a white dwarf, caused by falling matter from the atmosphere of
its binary companion, creates what kind of object?
A) hypernova
B) nova
C) gamma ray burstar
D) Type I supernova
E) Type II supernova
The concept that the direction of observation does not matter overall is
A) relativity.
B) homogeneity.
C) universality.
D) isotropy.
E) geometry.
How much stronger is the gravitational pull of the Sun on Earth, at 1 AU, than it is on
Saturn at 10 AU?
A) 5
B) 10
C) 25
D) 100
E) 250
A hypernova creates
A) a black hole.
B) a pulsar.
C) a neutron star.
D) millisecond-duration gamma-ray bursts.
E) Both B and C are correct.
The Galactic Year is the time for our solar system to orbit the Galaxy; it is about
A) 15 million years.
B) 225 million years.
C) 4.5 billion years.
D) 9.6 billion years.
E) 13.5 billion years.
Galileo found the rotation period of the Sun was approximately
A) a day.
B) a week.
C) a month.
D) three months.
E) a year.
In Drake’s equation, which of the following is the closest estimate for the number of
stars that are formed in the Milky Way Galaxy?
A) a star a day
B) a star a month
C) a star a year
D) a star a decade
E) a star a century
In a hydrogen atom, a transition from the 2nd to the 1st excited state will produce
A) the bright red Balmer alpha emission line.
B) no emission line.
C) a dark absorption line.
D) an ultraviolet spectral line.
E) three different emission lines.
The critical part of the atmosphere for protecting life on the ground from excessive
ultraviolet radiation is the
A) hydrosphere.
B) troposphere.
C) ozone layer.
D) stratosphere.
E) ionosphere.
If Taurus is now rising at sunset, which constellation will rise at sunset next month?
A) Scorpius
B) Aquarius
C) Gemini
D) Aries
E) Pisces
Which body has the densest atmosphere?
A) Mercury
B) Venus
C) Earth
D) Mars
E) our Moon
Our Sun will eventually become a nova.
Relative to the comet, the direction of the ion tail tells us
A) where the ecliptic is.
B) the direction of the Sun.
C) the velocity of the comet.
D) the direction the comet is traveling.
E) where the comet came from.
A star’s absolute magnitude is its apparent brightness as seen from
A) Pluto.
B) Alpha Centauri.
C) 10 light-years distance.
D) 10 parsecs distance.
E) 100 parsecs distance.
Increasing the temperature of a blackbody by a factor of 3 will increase its energy by a
factor of
A) 3
B) 6
C) 9
D) 12
E) 81
When the outer envelope of a red giant escapes, the remaining carbon core is called a
A) black dwarf.
B) white dwarf.
C) planetary nebula.
D) black hole.
E) brown dwarf.
An iron core cannot support a star because
A) iron is the heaviest element, and sinks upon differentiation.
B) iron has poor nuclear binding energy.
C) iron cannot fuse with other nuclei to produce energy.
D) iron supplies too much pressure.
E) iron is in the form of a gas, not a solid, in the center of a star.
In the Kelvin scale, absolute zero lies at
A) zero K.
B) 273 degrees C
C) -373 degrees C.
D) Both A and B are correct.
E) Both A and C are correct.
Assuming the conditions ripe for life and intelligence abound in the Galaxy, what factor
limits the number of galactic civilizations currently in existence?
A) the lack of metals for technology
B) the number of supernova explosions
C) the expansion of the universe
D) the average survival time of the civilizations
E) the speed of technological development
Which of the following is currently supplying high resolution X-ray images from
space?
A) ROSAT
B) Chandra
C) Einstein
D) HEAO-2
E) COBE
At what phase are the tides least noticeable?
A) new moon
B) full moon
C) third quarter
D) waxing crescent
E) waning gibbous
Inside the Roche Limit
A) large moons are torn apart.
B) is where large moons form.
C) ring systems cannot exist.
D) there is a gap in a planet’s magnetic field.
E) hydrogen can only exist in its liquid metallic form.
Which is the net result of the proton-proton chain?
A) 4 protons →1 helium 4 + a positron + a neutrino + gamma rays
B) 2 protons →deuterium + a positron + an antineutrino + X-rays
C) 4 protons →2 helium 2 + 2 positrons + ultraviolet radiation
D) 4 protons →1 helium 4 + 2 neutrinos + gamma rays
E) 6 protons →2 helium 4 + 3 positrons + 3 neutrinos + gamma rays
Into how many constellations is the celestial sphere divided?
A) 12
B) 44
C) 57
D) 88
E) 110
The redshift of the galaxies is correctly interpreted as
A) a Doppler shift due to the random motions of galaxies in space.
B) an aging of light as gravity weakens with time.
C) space itself is expanding with time, so the photons are stretched while they travel
through space.
D) placing our Galaxy near the center of the Local Group.
E) the differences in temperatures and star formation in old and young galaxies.
The brightest and probably youngest surface of any moon of Saturn belongs to
A) Titan.
B) Tethys.
C) Mimas.
D) Enceladus.
E) Iapetus.
Which of the following layers of the Earth is unique among the terrestrial planets?
A) hydrosphere
B) ionosphere
C) mantle
D) crust
E) core
Organic molecules are
A) living cells.
B) carbon-based.
C) silicon-based.
D) found only on Earth.
E) not found outside our solar system.
Who invented the galaxy classes, and what three major groups did he invent?
Why is the Moon heavily cratered but Earth is not?
In what way is Mercury’s core unusual?
A black hole may be indirectly detected from radiation emitted by the ________ disk
that surrounds it as matter is pulled inward.
Two stars are both spectral type K2V; if the closer is magnitude +3.7, and the fainter is
magnitude +8.7, then the brighter star is about ________ times closer.
Describe the interaction between Jupiter and Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Both RR Lyrae and Cepheid variables are giants that ________ in size over time.
What is the role of dust in the condensation theory?
As a result of the helium flash, a star’s luminosity ________.
Why is life difficult to define?
The ________ magnitude of a star depends on its luminosity and distance from us.
Contrast meteoroids and asteroids.
Why must both parallax and proper motion be known to give transverse velocity?
When dark matter was first discovered, some astronomers thought that Ωo was greater
than one from the extra gravity, favoring what type of universe?
Einstein’s ________ constant has been revived to help us explain dark energy.
The sunspot cycle is sometimes described as lasting 11 years, but others prefer to
consider it as 22 years; explain the rationale.
How can the image of a single quasar be doubled? What does that tell us about the
quasar’s distance?