Fundamentals of Astrophysics
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Course Introduction
Fundamentals of Astrophysics introduces students to the foundational concepts and physical principles governing the universe beyond Earth. The course covers topics such as the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies, black holes, and the interstellar medium, as well as cosmology and the origin of the universe. Emphasis is placed on the application of classical mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics to astronomical phenomena. Through lectures, problem-solving, and analysis of observational data, students develop a broad understanding of how astrophysicists use theoretical models and observations across the electromagnetic spectrum to explore and explain cosmic phenomena.
Recommended Textbook
The Essential Cosmic Perspective 6th Edition by Jeffrey O. Bennett
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2
Chapter 1: Our Place in the Universe
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Q1) Suppose we make a scale model of our solar system, with the Sun the size of a grapefruit. Which of the following best describes what the planets would look like?
A) The planets are all much smaller than the Sun. Four planets are within about 20 meters of the Sun, while the rest planets are spread much farther apart.
B) The planets are all much smaller than the Sun and are spread out evenly over a distance about the length of a large classroom.
C) The planets are all much smaller than the Sun. Four planets are located within a few centimeters of the Sun, and four planets are located at distances ranging up to about a meter.
D) The planets range in size from about the size of a marble to the size of a baseball. They are spread out over a region about the size of a football field.
Answer: A
Q2) Our solar system is located in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Discovering the Universe for Yourself
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Q1) If we have a new moon today, when we will have the next full moon?
A) In about 2 weeks
B) In about 1 week
C) In about 1 month
D) In about 6 months
Answer: A
Q2) Why does the Milky Way appear as a band of light in the sky?
Answer: The solar system lies in the outer parts of the thin disk of a spiral galaxy. Thus when we look along the plane of the disk, we see large numbers of stars that, to the naked eye, merge into a band of light. When we look out of the plane of the disk, there are very few stars and the night sky is much darker.
Q3) The Sun's path, as viewed from the equator, is highest in the sky on ________.
A) the winter solstice
B) the spring and fall equinoxes
C) the summer solstice
D) the day when Earth is closest to the Sun
Answer: B
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Chapter 3: The Science of Astronomy
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Sample Questions
Q1) He discovered that Jupiter has moons.
A) Tycho Brahe
B) Aristotle
C) Kepler
D) Galileo
E) Ptolemy
Answer: D
Q2) At the Sun Dagger in New Mexico, a dagger-shaped beam of sunlight pierces a spiral
A) every day at noon.
B) at noon on the summer solstice.
C) at sunset on the spring equinox.
D) at noon on the day of full moon each month.
E) during the totality of a total solar eclipse.
Answer: B
Q3) How did ancient peoples of central Africa predict the weather?
Answer: They observed the orientation of the crescent moon relative to the horizon. The orientation of the "horns" is related to rainfall patterns.
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Chapter 4: Making Sense of the Universe: Understanding
Motion, Energy, and Gravity
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Q1) Unbound orbits have more orbital energy than bound orbits.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Suppose the Sun were suddenly to shrink in size but that its mass remained the same. According to the law of conservation of angular momentum, what would happen?
A) The Sun would rotate faster than it does now.
B) The Sun's rate of rotation would slow.
C) The Sun's angular size in our sky would stay the same.
D) This could never happen, because it is impossible for an object to shrink in size without an outside torque.
Q3) The fact that Voyager 10 continues to speed out of the solar system, even though its rockets have no fuel, is an example of
A) Newton's first law of motion.
B) Newton's second law of motion.
C) Newton's third law of motion.
D) the universal law of gravitation.
E) none of the above
Q4) Give an example in which thermal energy might be converted to gravitational energy.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Light: the Cosmic Messenger
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Q1) The Size of Molecules: You have a small flask of oil. You pour this oil onto a clear, calm pool of water and watch the oil slick spread out slowly with time. Imagine that it is your belief that the oil is not a continuous substance but made of individual particles called "molecules". Assuming this hypothesis is true, can you make a testable prediction on how the oil slick will behave as it spreads? Will this prediction allow you to estimate the size of the "molecules?" Search online to see if there is any evidence that the Greeks attempted such an experiment.
Q2) Which of the following telescopes is best suited for studying the hottest intergalactic gas (10 million K) in a cluster of galaxies?
A) Very Large Array Radio Telescope
B) Hubble Space Telescope (UV and optical and some infrared)
C) Chandra X-ray Telescope
D) Herschel Infrared Telescope
Q3) Which transition represents the electron that emits a photon with the highest energy?
Q4) The atomic nuclei of the same element always have the same number of protons.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Which transition represents an electron that is breaking free of the atom?
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Chapter 6: Formation of Planetary Systems: Our Solar
System and Beyond
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Q1) Why are terrestrial planets denser than jovian planets?
A) Only dense materials could condense in the inner solar nebula.
B) The Sun's gravity gathered dense materials into the inner solar system.
C) Gravity compresses terrestrial planets to a higher degree, making them denser.
D) Actually, the jovian planets are denser than the terrestrial planets.
Q2) Which of the following statements about our Sun is not true?
A) The Sun's diameter is about 5 times that of Earth.
B) The Sun is a star.
C) The Sun contains more than 99% of all the mass in our solar system.
D) The Sun is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.
Q3) Which of the following statements about Mars is not true?
A) We could survive on Mars without spacesuits, as long as we brought oxygen in scuba tanks.
B) We have landed spacecraft on its surface.
C) It is considered part of our inner solar system.
D) It is frozen today, but once had flowing water.
Q4) Briefly summarize the differences between terrestrial and jovian planets.
Q5) Explain why the early Earth did not form with water, and how it gained it later in its formation.
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Chapter 7: Earth and the Terrestrial Worlds
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Q1) Which of the following best describes how the greenhouse effect works?
A) A planet's surface absorbs visible sunlight and returns this absorbed energy to space as infrared light. Greenhouse gases slow the escape of this infrared radiation, which thereby heats the lower atmosphere.
B) Greenhouse gases absorb X-rays and ultraviolet light from the Sun, and this absorbed radiation then heats the atmosphere and the surface.
C) Greenhouse gases absorb infrared light coming from the Sun, and this absorbed sunlight heats the lower atmosphere and the surface.
D) The greenhouse effect is caused primarily by ozone, which absorbs ultraviolet light and thereby makes the atmosphere much hotter than it would be otherwise.
Q2) Summarize some of the evidence suggesting that Mars once had flowing water.
Q3) How deep is an impact crater compared to its width?
A) 1-10%
B) 10-20%
C) 30-40%
D) 50-100%
E) 100-200%
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Chapter 8: Jovian Planet Systems
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Q1) Suppose the jovian planet atmospheres were composed 100 percent of hydrogen and helium rather than 98 percent of hydrogen and helium. How would the atmospheres be different in terms of color and weather?
Q2) What is the Great Red Spot?
A) A long-lived, high-pressure storm on Jupiter
B) A hurricane that comes and goes on Jupiter
C) A place where reddish particles from Io impact Jupiter's surface
D) A region on Jupiter where the temperature is so high that the gas glows with red visible light
Q3) Which moon is considered likely to have a deep, subsurface ocean of liquid water?
A) Europa
B) Io
C) Miranda
D) Triton
Q4) If Jupiter were 10 times more massive, it would generate nuclear fusion in its core and be a star instead of a planet.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: Asteroids, Comets, and Dwarf Planets: Their
Nature, Orbits, and Impacts
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Q1) What do asteroids and comets have in common?
A) Most are unchanged since their formation in the solar nebula.
B) They have similar densities.
C) They have similar orbital radii.
D) They have a similar range of orbital inclinations.
E) They have nothing in common with each other.
Q2) the atmosphere of Mars
A)nickel and iron
B)80 percent nitrogen, 20 percent oxygen
C)95 percent carbon dioxide
D)mostly hydrogen and helium
E)frozen methane, ammonia, water, and other gases and dust
Q3) What is Pluto's moon Charon thought to have in common with our own Moon?
A) It probably formed as a result of a giant impact.
B) It has the same basic composition.
C) It has the same approximate mass.
D) It has the same average density.
Q4) Suppose the planet Jupiter had never formed. How do you think the distribution of asteroids and comets in our solar system would be different? Explain.
Q5) What are "dwarf planets"?
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Chapter 10: Our Star
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Q1) Basis for Fundamental Solar Data: Table 10.1 in your text lists all of the basic fundamental data for the Sun: its mass, radius, luminosity, rotation rate, surface temperature, and composition. Taking each of the quantities in turn, outline the basic observations and physical principles used to infer the values. When done, consider one final fact about the Sun: its core temperature is about 15 million degrees (Kelvin). What observations support this value? Do you consider the Sun's core temperature to be more or less well established than the basic data of Table 10.1? Explain.
Q2) Which of the following best describes why the Sun emits most of its energy in the form of visible light?
A) Like all objects, the Sun emits thermal radiation with a spectrum that depends on its temperature, and the Sun's surface temperature is just right for emitting mostly visible light.
B) Nuclear fusion in the Sun's core produces visible light photons.
C) The visible light comes from energy level transitions as electrons in the Sun's hydrogen atoms jump between level 1 and level 2.
D) The Sun's gas is on fire like flames from wood or coal, and these flames emit visible light.
Q3) Briefly explain how the Sun became hot enough for nuclear fusion.
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Chapter 11: Surveying the Stars
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Q1) Suppose our Sun were suddenly replaced by a supergiant star. Which of the following would be true?
A) Earth would be inside the supergiant.
B) The supergiant's surface temperature would be much hotter than the surface temperature of our Sun.
C) Earth would fly off into interstellar space.
D) The supergiant would appear as large as the full Moon in our sky.
Q2) It is impossible for a star to have a negative apparent magnitude, such as -1.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Astronomers can measure a star's mass in only certain cases. Which one of the following cases might allow astronomers to measure a star's mass?
A) The star is a member of a binary star system.
B) The star is of spectral type G.
C) The star is of spectral type A.
D) We know the star's luminosity and distance.
Q4) Which group represents stars of the smallest radii?
Q5) Which group includes stars that are burning elements besides hydrogen in their cores?
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Chapter 12: Star Stuff
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Q1) Briefly summarize the stages of life for a low-mass star.
Q2) Suppose that the star Betelgeuse (the upper left shoulder of Orion) were to supernova tomorrow (as seen here on Earth). What would it look like to the naked eye?
A) Betelgeuse would remain a dot of light, but would suddenly become so bright that, for a few weeks, we'd be able to see this dot in the daytime.
B) We'd see a cloud of gas expanding away from the position where Betelgeuse used to be. Over a period of a few weeks, this cloud would fill our entire sky.
C) Because the supernova destroys the star, Betelgeuse would suddenly disappear from view.
D) Betelgeuse would suddenly appear to grow larger in size, soon reaching the size of the full Moon. It would also be about as bright as the full Moon.
Q3) As a solar mass protostar moves on to the main sequence,
A) its surface temperature and luminosity increase.
B) its surface temperature increases and its luminosity decreases.
C) its surface temperature and luminosity decrease.
D) its surface temperature decreases and its luminosity increases.
E) its surface temperature and luminosity remain the same.
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Chapter 13: Bizarre Stellar Graveyard
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Q1) Briefly describe what you would see if your friend plunged into a black hole.
Q2) Pulsars are thought to be ________.
A) accreting white dwarfs
B) rapidly rotating neutron stars
C) unstable high-mass stars
D) accreting black holes
Q3) Which of the following statements about novae is not true?
A) A star system that undergoes a nova may have another nova sometime in the future.
B) A nova involves fusion taking place on the surface of a white dwarf.
C) Our Sun will probably undergo at least one nova when it becomes a white dwarf about 5 billion years from now.
D) When a star system undergoes a nova, it brightens considerably, but not as much as a star system undergoing a supernova.
E) The word nova means "new star" and originally referred to stars that suddenly appeared in the sky, then disappeared again after a few weeks or months.
Q4) All pulsars are neutron stars, but not all neutron stars are pulsars.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 14: Our Galaxy
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Q1) What evidence supports the existence of a black hole at the center of our galaxy?
A) We observe an extremely bright X-ray source at the center of our galaxy.
B) We can see gas falling into an accretion disk and past the event horizon of a black hole.
C) The motions of the gas and stars at the center indicate that it contains 4 million solar masses within a region only 3 light-years across.
D) We observe a large, dark object that absorbs all light at the center of our galaxy.
E) all of the above
Q2) What is the thickness of the disk of the Milky Way?
A) 100 light years
B) 1,000 light years
C) 10,000 light years
D) 100,000 light years
E) 1,000,000 light years
Q3) Most of the current star formation in the Milky Way occurs in its spiral arms.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What produces the striking red, blue, and black colors of ionization nebulae?
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Chapter 15: Galaxies and the Foundation of Modern Cosmology
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Q1) The distinguishing feature of a starburst galaxy is ________.
A) a rate of star formation that may be 100 or more times greater than that in the Milky Way
B) the presence of an unusually large number of binary star systems containing X-ray bursters
C) a very large luminosity compared to the total luminosity of the Milky Way
D) strong radio emission from "lobes" of material well outside the visible boundaries of the galaxy
Q2) What is the most accurate way to determine the distance to a nearby galaxy?
A) radar ranging
B) stellar parallax
C) main sequence fitting
D) Cepheid variables
E) Hubble's law
Q3) A lenticular galaxy is another name for an elongated elliptical galaxy.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Explain how we can estimate that there are about 50-100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
Q5) How does a starburst end? What might happen to the galaxy afterwards?
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Chapter 16: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe
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Q1) How does gravitational lensing tell us about the mass of a galaxy cluster?
A) Using Einstein's general theory of relativity, we can calculate the cluster's mass from the precise way in which it distorts the light of galaxies behind it.
B) The lensing allows us to determine the orbital speeds of galaxies in the cluster, so that we can determine the mass of the cluster from the orbital velocity law.
C) The lensing broadens spectral lines, and we can use the broadening to "weigh" the cluster.
D) Newton's universal law of gravitation predicts how mass can distort light, so we can apply Newton's law to determine the mass of the cluster.
Q2) If the universe is accelerating, it will expand forever.
A)True
B)False
Q3) If we were to learn that the universe is a re-collapsing universe, then we must have misinterpreted Hubble's Law because the universe must be contracting, rather than expanding as generally believed.
A)True
B)False
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Page 18
Chapter 17: The Beginning of Time
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Q1) According to the Big Bang theory, why do we live in a universe that is made of almost entirely of matter rather than antimatter?
A) During the first 0.001 second after the Big Bang, particles and antiparticles were made in almost but not perfectly equal numbers. Everything annihilated except the very slight excess of matter particles.
B) GUT theories predict that under the conditions that prevailed in the early universe, the normal laws of physics would have been suspended so that only matter particles were created, and no particles of antimatter.
C) The fact that we live in a universe made of matter is not surprising, because antimatter has never been shown to exist for real.
D) Einstein's famous equation E = mc² tells us that energy can turn into matter, but does not tell us that it can turn into antimatter.
Q2) Why weren't many elements heavier than helium produced during the nucleosynthesis era?
Q3) Briefly describe the two key pieces of evidence that support the Big Bang theory.
Q4) What is Olbers' paradox, and what is its resolution?
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Page 19
Chapter 18: Life in the Universe
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Q1) Which of the following is not considered crucial for life to exist on some world?
A) Liquid water
B) A source of energy that can be used by life
C) A source of nutrients
D) An atmosphere
Q2) Which of the following best describes how the Drake equation is useful?
A) It helps us understand what we need to know in order to determine the likelihood of finding other civilizations.
B) It has allowed us to determine the number of civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.
C) It allows us to calculate the masses of planets orbiting other stars.
D) It tells us what wavelengths of light will be most useful to examine in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Q3) Which of the following best describes what we mean by a habitable world?
A) A planet or moon that could support life, if any life happened to be on it
B) A planet or moon with life
C) A planet or moon that lies within its star's habitable zone
D) A planet or moon on which humans could survive if we happened to go there
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