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Astronomy > Astronomy > Flashcards

Astronomy Flashcards

Final

1
Q

What is Jupiter made from

A

Hydrogen and Helium

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2
Q

What is Jupiter’s heat flow like

A

o due to gravitational energy converted to heat long ago as it formed and contracted.

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3
Q

What is Jupiter’s mantle like

A

of liquid molecular hydrogen topped by a thick atmosphere of H2, He, CH4, NH3, H2O.

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4
Q

What does Jupiter’s cloud layers consist of

A

ices of water, ammonium hydrosulfide, and ammonia.

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5
Q

Where does Jupiter’s color come from

A

trace compounds not yet completely identified. There is a lot of turbulence and circulating storms in the atmosphere, including the Great Red Spot

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6
Q

What are Jupiter’s main Moons

A

Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto

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7
Q

Which of Jupiter’s Moons are more like our Moon

A

Ganymede, Callisto

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8
Q

Which of Jupiter’s Moons are more like The Earth’s Size

A

Io, Europa

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9
Q

Which of Jupiter’s Moons are icy?

A

Ganymede and Callisto are larger and less dense than Io and Europa because they incorporate more ice. Their surfaces are older and cratered.

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10
Q

What is IO heated from

A

tidal flexure caused by 2:1 orbit resonance with Europa

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11
Q

What is Europa’s Surface like

A

approximate 2:1 resonance with Ganymede and is heated enough to liquify a water ocean under an icy crust.

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12
Q

What is Jupiter’s Ring like?

A

Jupiter’s are diffuse and dusty compared to Saturn’s. Jupiter’s ring is not visible from Earth; only seen when the camera is beyond the planet looking back toward the Sun

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13
Q

What are Saturn’s Rings like?

A

Easily Visible and more organized than Jupiters. • The ring structure is caused by shepherd moonlets embedded in the rings, and orbital resonances with larger moons outside the rings

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14
Q

What is Saturn made from?

A

Saturn is almost entirely hydrogen and helium

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15
Q

Why is Saturn less dense than Jupiter?

A

because it is smaller and less compressed by its own gravity. Again, like Jupiter, it has a relatively small solid core of denser material at its center.

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16
Q

What is Saturn’s largest moon? what is it like?

A

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is large enough and cold enough to hold a nitrogen-rich atmosphere thicker than Earth’s. Methane may take the role of water in Titan’s weather.

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17
Q

What are Both Uranus and Neptune made from?

A

Uranus and Neptune contain a little less hydrogen and helium, and a little more of the hydrogen-rich compounds like methane, ammonia, and water.

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18
Q

What is Uranus and Neptune’s Core like?

A

Like Jupiter, these planets have a relatively small solid core of denser material at their centers.

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19
Q

Why is Uranus and Neptune Blue?

A

is due to methane, which absorbs red light, allowing only the blue to reach us.

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20
Q

What is Uranus’s Moon?

A

Miranda, orbiting Uranus, has a patchwork surface revealing either surprising tectonic activity for a medium-sized moon or the chaos produced by a disruptive collision. Triton is fairly large and orbits Neptune in the “retrograde” sense. It may be a Pluto-like object captured by Neptune. Neptune’s tidal flexure of Triton has produced “ice geology” – change driven by water, not lava

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21
Q

What are Uranus’s Rings like?

A

Uranus’s rings are thin dark bands, and Neptune’s are incomplete arcs, perhaps fresh.

22
Q

What is Pluto like?

A

not massive enough to produce measurable perturbations on other planets’ orbits.

23
Q

What is Pluto most likely?

A

a large Kuiper Belt Object, dwarf planet, or ice dwarf.

24
Q

what is Pluto made from?

A

Methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen in a very thin atmosphere which mostly freezes out at aphelion.

25
Q

What is Pluto’s moon and what is it like?

A

Charon - not much smaller than Pluto; both rotate synchronously with 6.4-day orbit. Possibly formed, like our own moon, by an impact fragmenting Pluto.

26
Q

What is the Kuiper Belt?

A

The Kuiper Belt is basically a fat donut in the ecliptic plane, extending out from Neptune’s orbit several hundreds of AU. It contains icy objects of various sizes. It is a known source of some comets that are switched into orbits that bring them closer to the Sun.

27
Q

What are Comets like?

A

Icy-rocky nucleus a few km in size; surface layers heated by sunlight releasing gases and solid grains into a coma. Appears as a diffuse ball of light moving slowly against the background stars.

28
Q

Where is a Comet’s Tail usually facing?

A

Tail points generally away from the sun; ionized gas portion pushed by the solar wind, dust grain portion by the radiation pressure of reflected sunlight

29
Q

Which is one of the More famous Comets?

A

Halley’s Comet is the brightest “periodic” comet (76 yrs). Discovery of its periodicity supported the application of Kepler’s laws to things other than planets.

30
Q

What is Bode’s Law?

A

an approximate regularity in the orbital distances of the solar-system planets which matches Uranus and the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.

31
Q

What is the Largest asteroid?

A

Ceres (1801 discovery) still much smaller than the moon; qualifies as a dwarf planet.

32
Q

Where is the Belt Location?

A

the transition zone between planet types; Jovian perturbations prevented the accretion of a single object.

33
Q

What are some examples of Gravitational Resonances?

A

Kirkwood Gaps and Lagrangian points

34
Q

What is a meteoroid?

A

are asteroid fragments and comet debris with the potential to collide with earth.

35
Q

What is a meteor?

A

are the glowing trail of atmospheric gases, heated by the passage of a meteoroid (Shooting stars)

36
Q

What are Meteorites?

A

the pieces which survive atmospheric friction and hit the earth’s surface?

37
Q

What are Sporadic Meteors

A

can be seen at any time; meteor showers occur when the earth crosses the orbit of a decaying comet.

These happen every 10 mins
They are also mostly asteroid Fragments

38
Q

What are “showers”

A

Showers are named for their radiant point (like a road coming towards you), the constellation from which the debris appears to approach us. Comet debris generally does not survive the atmospheric friction - no shower of meteorites

39
Q

Suppose the sun is just setting and you see the Moon high in the sky, 90 degrees away from the sunset. What phase is this Moon?

A

Half Full

40
Q

As seen from Atlanta, a star that rises in the northeast will be above the horizon for how much time?

A

More than half a day later

41
Q

How would the stars appear to move when observed from the Earth’s North Pole?

A

They would move in circles parallel to the horizon.

42
Q

As the Sun slowly shifts about a degree per day around the ecliptic, when is it right above the Earth’s equator?

A

Semiannually at the equinoxes.

43
Q

A planet is orbiting the Sun, but suddenly all forces on the planet are turned off. How does the planet move then?

A

It moves in a straight line at constant speed

44
Q

If tides were caused only by the Moon on an ideal coast line, which would be correct?

A

Two high tides and two low tides in a 24 hr 50 min cycle.

45
Q

Which of these has the longest wavelength?

A

The blue color of the daytime sky.

The infrared radiation from your classmates.

46
Q

For ideal thermal radiation, which statement below describes the new energy output if the temperature is increased from 2000 K to a new temperature of 4000 K?

A

16 times more energy

47
Q

In hydrogen, an electron changing from the second to the third orbital energy level would account for what spectral line?

A

An absorption line at a visible wavelength.

48
Q

A 4-inch aperture telescope would be a modest telescope size for amateurs. How many times more light is gathered by the Fernbank 36-inch telescope?

A

81

49
Q

Which best describes the wavelengths of radiation from astronomical objects which can be detected by telescopes on the Earth’s surface?

A

Visible wavelengths (400-700 nm) and radio wavelengths greater than 1 mm.

50
Q

A certain planet has a mass 20 times Earth’s mass and a volume 80 times Earth’s volume. Which would be a correct conclusion from this data?

A

It is less dense than Earth.

51
Q

Which of these has an atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide along with a surface pressure which is very low compared to Earth’s?

A

Mars

52
Q

What best explains the Moon’s composition and orbital properties?

A

A large impact dislodged part of Earth’s mantle, and the fragments coalesced into the Moon.

Astronomy (1 decks)

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