- How long does it take light to reach the earth from the sun?
Your answer:
8 seconds
18 seconds
8 minutes
18 minutes
- What is the system closest to the earth?
Your answer:
Tau Ceti
Alpha Centauri
Orion
Alpha Leo
- What is the brightest star in the night sky?
Your answer:
Antares
Rigel
Sirius
Vega
- What kind of variable star changes in brightness caused by the shrinking and swelling of the star?
Your answer:
cepheid
white dwarf
main sequence
giant
- What type of star is typically the size of the earth?
Your answer:
black dwarf
giant
main sequence
white dwarf
- What is a devise that separates light into different colors, or wavelengths?
Your answer:
anemometer
barometer
parallax
spectrometer
- What color stars are the coolest?
Your answer:
blue
yellow
orange
red
- What color stars are the hottest?
Your answer:
blue
yellow
orange
red
- What is another name for the north star?
Your answer:
Orion
Sirius
Polaris
Vega
- What are the two types of motion associated with stars?
Your answer:
actual/apparent
moderate/motionless
actual/motionless
moderate/apparent
- What do astronomers analyze to determine the composition and surface temperature of a star?
Your answer:
the size of the star
the shape of the star
the distance from the earth to the star
the spectrum of the star
- How do astronomers measure the distance to stars that are less than 1,000 light years from the earth?
Your answer:
telescopes
temperature
parallax
doppler effect
- What space telescope has seen farther into space than any other telescope?
Your answer:
Eagle
Hubble
Newtonian
Galilean
- Where do stars form?
Your answer:
in nebulas
in clusters
by planets
near moons
- What type of star has the longest life?
Your answer:
protostars
main sequence
giants
white dwarfs
- What type of star is probably not yet in existence because it is thought that the universe is too young to have produced them yet?
Your answer:
protostars
white dwarfs
black dwarfs
supergiants
- What can appear up to a million times brighter than the sun and then in just a few days begin to fade back to its normal brightness?
Your answer:
main sequence
white dwarf
nova
supernova
- What did Chinese astronomers see in the year 1054 in the sky that was so bright they could see it during the day for three weeks?
Your answer:
a black hole
a supernova
a main sequence star
a new moon
- What kind of star would weigh 100 million tons on earth with only a spoonful of its matter?
Your answer:
cepheid star
neutron star
main sequence star
a supergiant
- What kinds of stars are always visible in the night sky?
Your answer:
circumpolar
apparent
cepheid
actual
- What is the process that generates energy in the core of a main sequence star?
Your answer:
fusion of carbon to hydrogen
fusion of helium to hydrogen
fusion of hydrogen to helium
fusion of oxygen to argon
- What does a main sequence star convert hydrogen into?
Your answer:
carbon
helium
oxygen
argon
- How many times bigger than the sun are giant?
Your answer:
10
50
75
100
- How many times bigger than the sun are supergiant?
Your answer:
10
50
75
100
- What type of star shines for billions of years before it is completely cooled?
Your answer:
black dwarfs
main sequence
supergiants
white dwarfs
- What form of fusion occurs in a giant star?
Your answer:
helium to carbon
helium to argon
helium to hydrogen
helium to oxygen
- What does a white dwarf become when it no longer emits energy?
Your answer:
black dwarf
giant
super giant
black hole
- What causes a nova explosion?
Your answer:
accumulation of gas on a white dwarf
excessive dust on a main sequence star
too much debris around a planet
high temperatures
- Why can only very large stars form black holes?
Your answer:
because they are the hottest stars
only very large stars collapse with enough force to crush their cores
black holes need lots of room
because very large stars have a short life span
- Who predicted the existence of black holes in 1907?
Your answer:
Stephan Hawking
Carl Sagan
Johannes Kepler
Karl Swartzchild
- What kind of nebulae absorb the light of more distant stars behind them?
Your answer:
light
dark
irregular
coarse
- What is the name of the galaxy the earth belongs to called?
Your answer:
Milky Way
Alpha Centauri
Beta Scorpii
Orion
- What type of galaxy contains millions of young stars, gas and dust?
Your answer:
spiral
irregular
globular
elliptical
- What type of galaxy has no young stars and contains very little dust and gas?
Your answer:
spiral
irregular
globular
elliptical
- What type of galaxy has no particular shape and the stars are unevenly distributed throughout the galaxy?
Your answer:
spiral
irregular
globular
elliptical
- How many recognized constellations are there?
Your answer:
22
44
66
88
- What is the name given to the brightest star within each constellation?
Your answer:
stellar
gamma
beta
alpha
- What is the name given to the second brightest star within each constellation?
Your answer:
alpha
beta
gamma
stellar
- What would the brightest star in the constellation Leo be called?
Your answer:
Alpha Leo
Beta Leo
Gamma Leo
Stellar Leo
- What other name does the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, (Alpha Scorpii) have?
Your answer:
Antares
Centauri
Rigel
Vega
- What type of galaxy does the earth belong to?
Your answer:
globular
spiral
irregular
elliptical
- What types of star clusters contain the most stars and are distributed around the central core of the galaxy?
Your answer:
spiral
globular
open
irregular
- What types of star clusters have a spherical shape?
Your answer:
spiral
globular
open
irregular
- What starlike objects give off radio waves and X rays that can be detected from earth?
Your answer:
pulsar
asteroid
nova
quasar
- What type of star is our sun?
Your answer:
giant
main sequence
super giant
white dwarf
- Why are black holes difficult to locate?
Your answer:
they do not give off light
they are too far away
they are hidden in asteroid fields
they are always on the dark sides of planets
- What increases in a star as its temperature increases?
Your answer:
brightness
size
distance from the earth
gas production
- Why do the patterns of the stars appear to shift westward slightly from night to night?
Your answer:
because of the revolution of the earth around the sun
because the stars are constantly moving
because of gravity
because of the rotation of the earth on its axis
- What is the most common element found in the majority of stars?
Your answer:
hydrogen
helium
argon
oxygen
- Why do stars appear to move in circular paths around Polaris?
Your answer:
because of the revolution of the earth around the sun
because the stars are constantly moving
because of gravity
because of the rotation of the earth on its axis