Chapter 2 Test Flashcards
What are circumpolar stars?
Celestial bodies that are never set and therefore are always seen from a given location on Earth.
What is a constellation?
A group of stars that form pictures in the sky that speak the gospel of Christ.
What are binary stars?
Two stars linked by a gravitational attraction that revolution around a common center of mass.
What is the North Celestial Pole?
A point in the sky that is on a line that extends Earth’s rotational axis.
What is a supernova?
A cataclysmic explosion of a giant star.
What is a star’s apparent magnitude?
It’s apparent magnitude is based on how far the star is from us, and it’s absolutely magnitude.
What is a star’s absolute magnitude?
It’s brightness if it was 10 parsers away from the observer.
What is the Stephen Gould quote?
“Facts do not ‘speak for themselves’, they are read in light of a theory.”
What are the three different types of galaxies?
Irregular, spiral, and elliptical.
What is the Large Magellanic Cloud?
It is irregular and elliptical. It is 160,000 light years away.
What is the Small Megellanic Cloud?
It is half the size of the Large Megallanic Cloud, and 190,000 light years away.
What do our two neighboring galaxies have in common?
They are both located in the south circumpolar region.
