If a new wave arrives on shore every two seconds, then its frequency is 2 Hz.
Our Sun will fade in luminosity as its supply of hydrogen drops in a billion years.
Galileo’s observations of the entire phase cycle of Venus proved that Ptolemy’s
epicycles could not be correct in keeping Venus between us and the Sun.
The center of the Milky Way lies in the direction of the constellation Cygnus.
All the gamma-ray bursters measured to date have distances of millions or even billions
of light years.
The processes which produced Ganymede’s groove terrain are on-going, according to
the latest Galileo images.
Kepler’s third law allows us to find the average distance to a planet from observing its
period of rotation on its axis.
Neutron stars are 100,000 times denser than white dwarfs.
The core of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A, is a strong radio source in the sky.
Although it has no liquid water, Mercury has a tidal bulge.
The light output from some quasars varies in just a few hours.
The lobes of radio galaxies are perpendicular to their plane of rotation.
Photography with film is still the preferred way of capturing fine detail in the faintest,
most distant galaxies.
The giant Borealis basin around the Martian north pole may have formed due to an
impact with an asteroid twice the size of Ceres.
The surface temperature of Venus is 730K, even hotter than Mercury.
It is the formation of iron in an evolved giant’s core that triggers a Type II supernova
event.
Globular clusters are typically much older than open clusters.
According to Copernicus, retrograde motion occurs at opposition for the outer planets.
Like supernovae, quasars must end with a violent explosion.
While ionized hydrogen glows bright red, neutral hydrogen is transparent visibly and
best studied with 21-cm radio waves.
There is evidence that a collision between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy has produced
a radio galaxy.
Right ascension in the sky is very similar to latitude on the Earth.
The greater the disturbance of the medium, the higher the amplitude of the wave.
Today the majority of the mass of the universe is already in the form of black dwarfs,
the solution to the “dark matter” problem.
William Herschel was the discoverer of Uranus.
Like Jupiter’s other icy moons, Europa is covered with craters.
Thanks to the far-flung Voyager and Pioneers, knowledge of our presence has now
spread out over 30 light years.
The three most abundant gases in our atmosphere are nitrogen, oxygen, and argon.
Comets were likely a major agent in bringing both water and organic molecules to the
surface of the early Earth.
The Mars Rover found undisputed microfossils, proving life once existed on Mars.
Earth behaves as an artificial pulsar, with the strongest pulses for alien observers when
North America is either rising or setting.
A resonance with Mimas clears out the ring particles from Cassini’s Division.
Dark dust clouds are optically invisible, but give off radio energy.
Radio telescopes have poorer angular resolution than optical telescopes because radio
waves have a much longer wavelength than optical waves.
If we are the Moon’s penumbra, then we will see a partial lunar eclipse.
Galaxies contain less mass as dark matter than as visible stars.
Spacecraft have imaged erupting volcanoes on Io and Triton.
Gamma-ray bursters are all found to be within our galaxy.
What is true of the Local Group?
A) The Andromeda galaxy is a satellite of the Milky Way.
B) The giant ellipticals are the largest members.
C) It consists of mostly spirals.
D) The Andromeda galaxy (M31), and the Milky Way are the two largest galaxies.
E) It contains about 2500 galaxies.
What encouragement for life on Mars came from the Global Surveyor?
A) spectral evidence for chlorophyll
B) Hellas has a lake of salt water in its bottom.
C) The ice of the south polar cap is water, not dry ice.
D) strong photographic evidence for flowing and standing water on Mars in the past
E) The face on Mars is an artificial construct.
Our most detailed maps of Venus come from
A) the Magellan space probe.
B) the Hubble Space Telescope.
C) direct observation from Earth-based optical telescopes.
D) manned landings.
E) Earth-based radio telescopes.
Which of the following appears least important in the evolution of life here?
A) the stable luminosity of the Sun for billions of years
B) the magnetic field of the Earth
C) the presence of water and carbon atoms
D) an Earth-like atmosphere
E) the correct distance from the Sun
What was most surprising about SN1987A?
A) The parent star was a blue supergiant, much like Deneb or Rigel.
B) The supernova was luminous enough to see with the naked eye.
C) The supernova was not even in our own Galaxy.
D) It did not produce the flood of neutrinos our models had led us to expect.
E) Its pulsar appeared within weeks of the explosion.
The orbits of Population II stars have been compared to
A) planets around the Sun.
B) satellites around planets.
C) comets around the Sun.
D) binary stars.
E) the accretion disc around a black hole.
At which planet can the pole remain in darkness for 42 years, then have 42 years of
constant daylight?
A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) Pluto
The radio source ________ is located in a place consistent with the center of our
Galaxy.
A) Cygnus X-1
B) 3C 273
C) 47 Tucanae
D) M8, the Lagoon Nebula
E) Sgr A*
Long-period comets are believed to originally come from
A) the asteroid belt.
B) the Kuiper belt.
C) the Oort cloud.
D) the satellite system of Jupiter.
E) the interstellar medium.
Pulsars
A) spin very rapidly when they’re young.
B) are the cause of gamma-ray bursts.
C) spin very slowly when they’re young, and gradually spin faster as they age.
D) generally form from 25-solar-mass stars.
E) emit radio in all directions.
The most striking example of solar variability was the
A) Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s.
B) Maunder Minimum from 1645-1715.
C) Sporer Minimum that doomed the Anasazi.
D) the fall of Rome.
E) Joseph’s seven lean years in the Old Testament.
Io’s internal heat is due to tidal interactions with Jupiter and Europa.
Which statement about seismic waves is true?
A) Only S waves can travel through liquid.
B) P waves travel faster, and thus arrive sooner than do the S waves.
C) In the shadow zones, neither type is observed.
D) S waves can travel though the outer core, but P waves cannot.
E) On the far side of the Earth, only the S waves on the surface can be detected.
Copernicus’ Heliocentric theory explains that
A) planetary orbits are elliptical in shape.
B) the Sun lies at one focus of an ellipse.
C) Venus retrogrades when she overtakes us at inferior conjunction.
D) all planets lie between the Sun and Earth.
E) Mars will retrograde when it reaches a certain position on its epicycle.
Meteorites are important because
A) they contain pristine material from the solar nebula.
B) large ones may cause mass extinctions.
C) some come from the Moon and Mars, as well as the asteroid belt.
D) All of the above are true.
E) None of the above are true.
In a neutron star, the core is
A) made of compressed neutrons in contact with each other.
B) electrons and protons packed so tightly they are in contact.
C) constantly expanding and contracting.
D) primarily iron and silicon.
E) no longer rotating.
Gold is rare since the only time it can be formed is during the core collapse of a
supernova.
A recurrent nova could eventually build up to a
A) planetary nebula.
B) Type I supernova.
C) Type II supernova.
D) hypernova.
E) quasar.
Today, an average lunar moonquake releases about as much energy as
A) an atomic bomb.
B) a firecracker.
C) the Mount St. Helens eruption.
D) a major U.S. city uses in 1 year.
E) the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
Neutral hydrogen atoms are best studied from their energy given off as
A) red hydrogen alpha emission, at 656.3 nm.
B) 121.3 nm as Lyman alpha emission in the UV.
C) 21-cm waves in the radio region.
D) 0.2 nm as X-rays.
E) Neutral hydrogen gives off no detectable radiation, since it is cold, not hot.
The height of the quasar epoch was
A) 5 billion years ago.
B) when there was still sufficient mass to fuel the supermassive black holes at their
center.
C) before the formation of galaxies.
D) less than 1 billion years ago.
E) before mass had a chance to accumulate at the nucleus.
Which of these gets so bright as to be seen in daylight at times?
A) Mercury
B) Venus
C) Mars
D) Jupiter
E) Saturn
The Hipparcos data give us
A) information on only the 6,000 brightest stars.
B) an accurate distance to the Moon.
C) parallaxes as small as 0.005.”
D) distances to about 100 billion stars, practically everything in the Milky Way Galaxy.
E) parallaxes to the nearest galaxies.
Which stars in globular clusters are believed to be examples of mergers?
A) eclipsing binaries
B) blue supergiants
C) blue stragglers
D) brown dwarfs
E) planetary nebulae cores
Which planet had the Great Dark Spot in 1989, but had lost it by 1995?
A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) Mars
Can a star become a red giant more than once?
A) yes, before and after the helium flash
B) yes, before and after the Type II supernova event
C) no, the planetary nebula blows off all the outer shells completely
D) no, it will lose so much mass as to cross the Chandrasekhar Limit
E) no, or we would see them as the majority of naked-eye stars
What does Hubble’s law imply about the history of the universe?
A) The universe must be infinitely old and huge.
B) The universe had a beginning and has expanded since, giving it a finite age.
C) The Milky Way lies exactly at the center of this expansion.
D) The redshifts will lengthen with time due to dark energy.
E) The redshifts will turn to blueshifts as universe contraction follows the expansion.
Which is characteristic of globular star clusters?
A) old age and hundreds of thousands of stars, only about 30 ly wide
B) no remaining main sequence stars, but millions of white dwarfs
C) only brown dwarfs in a yellow ball 100 ly across
D) bright blue main sequence stars, and thousands of them
E) a mix of old and young stars, about 100,000 ly across
When an electron in a hydrogen atom changes its spin from the same to the opposite
direction as the proton, it
A) emits an X-ray photon.
B) absorbs a radio wave photon.
C) emits a radio wave photon.
D) absorbs a visible light photon.
E) neither emits nor absorbs a photon.
Which of the following does not fall into the category of interplanetary debris?
A) comets
B) meteoroids
C) rings around the jovian planets.
D) Trojan asteroids
E) Kuiper Belt bodies
If a comet’s ion tail is pointing perpendicular to its direction of travel, the comet is
A) close to or at perihelion.
B) close to or at aphelion.
C) moving closer to the Sun.
D) moving away from the Sun.
E) A comet’s tail never points perpendicular to its motion.
Redshift surveys give us
A) an idea of how turbulent the intergalactic gas is.
B) a 3-D layout of galaxies in space.
C) the total mass of the universe.
D) a more accurate census of the Local Group.
E) a better value of the speed of light.
The hot, dense universe shortly after the Big Bang is referred to as the ________.
The type of binaries where we can find their sizes have their orbits almost ________ as
seen from the Earth.
With respect to heavy elements, the stars of the Halo are ________ in metals.
According to Newton’s second law, when the same force acts on two bodies, the body
with the larger mass will have the ________ acceleration.
A “gravitational slingshot” enables a spacecraft to ________.
Discuss the value of Ho if the universe were closed and starting to collapse.
How does Stefan’s law and a knowledge of Earth’s history tell us that the Sun’s
temperature cannot have varied much in the last 3.5 billion years?
The ________ transport subsurface material from the Sun’s equator to its poles and
back at a depth far below the convection zone.
Where does the 21-cm radiation arise?
While ________ gas is the main atmospheric component of both Mars and Venus, its
density means it plays a far larger role in heating Venus.
On average, the Milky Way forms about ________ stars per year.
To which portion of the Milky Way are the Magellanic Clouds most similar? Why?
What other solar system body has an average density similar to the Sun’s? Why?
Methane gas absorbs the color ________, accounting for the colors of Uranus and
Neptune.
The greatest redshifts yet observed for quasars is about ________.
In its ________ stage, the new protostar’s solar winds will form bi-polar jets as the star’s
magnetic field intensifies.
In the Hubble Classification scheme, the three main types of galaxies are ________,
________, and ________.