Astronomy

Question 1

What is Jupiter made from

Answer 1

Hydrogen and Helium

Question 2

What is Jupiter’s heat flow like

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What is Jupiter’s mantle like

Answer 3

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

Question 4

What does Jupiter’s cloud layers consist of

Answer 4

ices of water, ammonium hydrosulfide, and ammonia.

Question 5

Where does Jupiter’s color come from

Answer 5

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

Question 6

What are Jupiter’s main Moons

Answer 6

Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto

Question 7

Which of Jupiter’s Moons are more like our Moon

Answer 7

Ganymede, Callisto

Question 8

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

Answer 8

Io, Europa

Question 9

Which of Jupiter’s Moons are icy?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What is IO heated from

Answer 10

tidal flexure caused by 2:1 orbit resonance with Europa

Question 11

What is Europa’s Surface like

Answer 11

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

Question 12

What is Jupiter’s Ring like?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

What are Saturn’s Rings like?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

What is Saturn made from?

Answer 14

Saturn is almost entirely hydrogen and helium

Question 15

Why is Saturn less dense than Jupiter?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

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

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

What are Both Uranus and Neptune made from?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What is Uranus and Neptune’s Core like?

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Why is Uranus and Neptune Blue?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What is Uranus’s Moon?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

What are Uranus’s Rings like?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What is Pluto like?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

What is Pluto most likely?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

what is Pluto made from?

Answer 24

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

Question 25

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

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

What is the Kuiper Belt?

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

What are Comets like?

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

Where is a Comet's Tail usually facing?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Which is one of the More famous Comets?

Answer 29

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.

Question 30

What is Bode's Law?

Answer 30

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

Question 31

What is the Largest asteroid?

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Where is the Belt Location?

Answer 32

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

Question 33

What are some examples of Gravitational Resonances?

Answer 33

Kirkwood Gaps and Lagrangian points

Question 34

What is a meteoroid?

Answer 34

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

Question 35

What is a meteor?

Answer 35

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

Question 36

What are Meteorites?

Answer 36

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

Question 37

What are Sporadic Meteors

Answer 37

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

Question 38

What are "showers"

Answer 38

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

Question 39

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?

Answer 39

Half Full

Question 40

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

Answer 40

More than half a day later

Question 41

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

Answer 41

They would move in circles parallel to the horizon.

Question 42

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

Answer 42

Semiannually at the equinoxes.

Question 43

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

Answer 43

It moves in a straight line at constant speed

Question 44

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

Answer 44

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

Question 45

Which of these has the longest wavelength?

Answer 45

The blue color of the daytime sky. The infrared radiation from your classmates.

Question 46

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?

Answer 46

16 times more energy

Question 47

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

Answer 47

An absorption line at a visible wavelength.

Question 48

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?

Answer 48

81

Question 49

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

Answer 49

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

Question 50

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?

Answer 50

It is less dense than Earth.

Question 51

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

Answer 51

Mars

Question 52

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

Answer 52

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