General Astronomy
Midterm Exam
Course Introduction
General Astronomy provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts of astronomy, including the structure and scale of the universe, motions of celestial objects, the life cycles of stars, the solar system, and the tools and techniques used for astronomical observations. Students will explore historical and modern discoveries, examine the physical principles governing astronomical phenomena, and develop an understanding of the scientific methods used to study the cosmos. This course is designed for non-science majors as well as those seeking a foundation for more advanced study in astronomy and related fields.
Recommended Textbook Astronomy Preliminary Edition by Adam Frank
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Getting Started: Science, astronomy, and Being Human
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Q1) Express 10,000,000 in standard scientific notation.
A) 1.0 × 10 -7
B) 1.0 × 10<sup>6</sup>
C) 1.0 × 10<sup>7</sup>
D) 10.0 × 10<sup>7</sup>
Answer: C
Q2) (4.0 × 10 )× (1.0 × 10 )= :
A) 4.0 × 10<sup>8</sup>
B) 5.0 × 10<sup>32</sup>
C) 4.0 × 10<sup>4</sup>
D) 4.0 × 10<sup>12</sup>
Answer: D
Q3) At the time of this writing,the population of the United States is about three hundred twenty million,or:
A) 3.2 × 10<sup>6</sup>
B) 3.2 × 10<sup>7</sup>
C) 3.2 × 10<sup>8</sup>
D) 3.2 × 10<sup>9</sup>
Answer: C
Page 3
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Chapter 2: A Universe Made, a Universe Discovered
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Q1) In order to explain the varying speed of the planets across the night sky,Ptolemy's model introduced:
A) elliptical orbits.
B) the equant.
C) the celestial sphere.
D) synodic months.
Answer: B
Q2) The Sun's path across the celestial sphere over the course of a year is the:
A) zenith.
B) zodiac.
C) ecliptic.
D) analemma.
Answer: C
Q3) You observe a bright object one night near the North Star at midnight.It does not twinkle.Can this object be a planet? Why or why not?
Answer: No.The North Star is near the north celestial pole,far from the ecliptic.All the planets appear on or near the ecliptic.
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4
Chapter 3: A Universe of Universal Laws
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Q1) Planet A has nine times the mass of planet B,but they have equal radii.How fast would you have to launch a rocket from planet A for it to escape the pull of its gravity,if the corresponding speed for planet A is 10 m/s?
A) 3 m/s
B) 10 m/s
C) 30 m/s
D) 90 m/s
Answer: C
Q2) Planets in the solar system follow:
A) circular orbits with the Sun displaced from the center.
B) circular orbits with the Sun at the center.
C) elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus.
D) elliptical orbits with the Sun at the center.
Answer: C
Q3) Both the Ptolemaic and Copernican models required equants.What assumption and observed phenomena necessitated these additions?
Answer: Both models assumed uniform circular motion for the planets,but the variations in the observed speeds of the planets required that the circular orbits be displaced from the central point.
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Chapter 4: A Universe of Universal Laws
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Q1) The radiation spectrum produced by a blackbody depends on its:
A) temperature.
B) composition.
C) mass.
D) thickness.
Q2) An astronomer measures the spectrum of a star and finds that it emits the most intense light at 0.5 mm.What is its temperature?
A) 1,000 K
B) 3,000 K
C) 6,000 K
D) 9,000 K
Q3) Among the following,the best angular resolution will be achieved with a ________ diameter telescope observing in ________ light.
A) 10-m; blue
B) 10-m; red
C) 1-m; blue
D) 1-m; red
Q4) What does thermal energy represent?
Q5) Describe the path of light in a reflecting telescope with a Newtonian focus.
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Chapter 5: The Architecture and Birth of Planetary Systems
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Q1) The orbits of gas giants can move after their formation because of:
A) cooling of the planet.
B) transfer of angular momentum from the planet's rotation to its orbit.
C) evolution of the central protostar.
D) collisions with comets.
Q2) Suppose that a protoplanetary disk around a Sun-like star is heated past about 5 AU by an unknown process.How might the resulting planetary system differ from our own?
A) The outer planets would orbit faster.
B) The outer planets would be rockier.
C) The outer planets would be more massive.
D) This would not affect any of the planets.
Q3) A planet with a mass of 7-ME is a(n):
A) terrestrial planet.
B) super-Earth.
C) ice giant.
D) gas giant.
Q4) Why do the compositions of planets in our Solar System depend on distance from the Sun?
Q5) How do terrestrial planets form?
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Chapter 6: Home Base: Earth and Moon
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Q1) How would the surface of Earth change if its deep interior had no radioactive elements?
A) There would be no plate tectonics.
B) It would be more hospitable to life.
C) It would have deeper oceans.
D) There would be no significant change.
Q2) Half of the carbon-14 in a rock decays to nitrogen-14 after about 5,700 years.How long would it take before there is seven times as much carbon-14 as nitrogen-14 (i.e.the composition of the sample is 7/8 carbon-14)?
Q3) What is responsible for heating the stratosphere? What about the ionosphere?
Q4) Which of the following sequences correctly characterizes the composition of Earth's layers,from its center to its surface?
A) solid iron, molten iron, solid nickel, granite
B) silicate rocks, molten iron, silicate rocks
C) molten iron, silicate rocks, granite
D) solid iron, molten iron, silicate rocks
Q5) What kind of magnet does Earth's magnetic field most closely resemble?
Q6) Why has the surface temperature of Earth varied throughout geologic history?
Q7) How is the heat powering a shield volcano generated and transported?
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Chapter 7: Sibling Worlds: Mercury, Venus, and Mars
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Q1) During the first 500 million years of its existence,Mars most closely resembled:
A) Earth.
B) the Moon.
C) Mercury.
D) Venus.
Q2) The primary source of greenhouse gases on Venus is:
A) chemical reactions in the cloud layers.
B) asteroid and comet impacts.
C) volcanism.
D) evaporation.
Q3) What geographic features on Mars provide evidence for water on Mars?
Q4) How does the massive Olympus Mons volcano on Mars show that Mars does not undergo plate tectonics?
Q5) Why did Mars become significantly less habitable about 500 million years after its formation?
Q6) How are Mercury's orbital and rotation periods related to each other? Why?
Q7) Compare the internal structure of Mars to that of Earth.
Q8) Why does Mercury lack a substantial atmosphere?
Page 9
Q9) What two reasons are most important in explaining the different atmospheric compositions of Earth and Mars?
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Chapter 8: Gas, ice, and Stone: the Outer Planets
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Q1) The Cassini Division is:
A) a result of tidally disrupted comets.
B) maintained through gravitational interactions with moons.
C) driven by magnetic anomalies.
D) evolving significantly over the course of a few decades.
Q2) What is the composition of the thickest layer of Jupiter?
A) rocky and metallic material
B) liquid metallic hydrogen
C) liquid molecular hydrogen
D) gaseous molecular hydrogen
Q3) What is the source of Jupiter's magnetic field?
Q4) Why does Saturn bulge outward at the equator rather than its poles?
Q5) The light-colored bands on Jupiter are ________ regions.
A) high-velocity
B) low-velocity
C) high-pressure
D) low-pressure
Q6) What is responsible for the coloration of Jupiter's clouds?
Q7) What aspect of Jupiter's near-space environment poses the biggest problem for satellites orbiting the planet?
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Chapter 9: Life and the Search for Habitable Worlds
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Q1) Why do astronomers search for signals of extraterrestrial intelligence at a wavelength of 21 centimeters?
A) At 21 centimeters there is very little contamination from other material in the galaxy.
B) Hydrogen emits radiation at 21 centimeters.
C) Oxygen emits radiation at 21 centimeters.
D) Greenhouse gases emit radiation at 21 centimeters.
Q2) Biologists refer to changes in a population's genetic distribution that result purely through random chance as:
A) natural selection.
B) genetic drift.
C) genetic evolution.
D) none of the above; such changes do not occur.
Q3) In which part of the cell do mutations occur?
A) DNA
B) enzymes
C) RNA
D) proteins
Q4) How is information from an organism's genes used to construct enzymes for use in a cell?
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Chapter 10: The Sun As a Star
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Q1) What are the two properties that define a star?
Q2) Where does fusion occur in the Sun?
A) the corona
B) the photosphere
C) the radiative zone
D) the core
Q3) Differentiate nuclear fusion and fission.
Q4) Convection in the Sun can be observed through:
A) sunspots.
B) granulation.
C) solar flares.
D) solar neutrinos.
Q5) How are oscillations of the Sun's surface measured?
A) the sunspot cycle
B) redshifts and blueshifts of absorption lines
C) variations in the solar luminosity
D) solar neutrinos
Q6) Why does fusion occur only at the center of the Sun?
Q7) What can astronomers learn by measuring the regular oscillations of material on the Sun's surface?
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Chapter 11: Measuring the Stars: the Main Sequence and Its Meaning
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Q1) Draw an HR diagram and sketch the location of the main sequence,red giant branch,and white dwarfs.
Q2) Star A has an apparent magnitude of 5,while star B has an apparent magnitude of 10.If star A is twice as far from Earth as star B,how do the luminosities of the two stars compare?
Q3) Which of the following stellar properties does NOT increase as you trace the main sequence from right to left on an HR diagram?
A) fusion rate
B) peak wavelength
C) surface area
D) temperature
Q4) How have astronomers learned about the life cycles of stars?
A) through laboratory experiments
B) by studying the Big Bang
C) by studying the complete life cycles of individual stars
D) by measuring the properties of many stars at a single instant
Q5) What aspects of a star change significantly during its time on the main sequence?
Page 14
Q6) How do astronomers determine the composition of stars?
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Chapter 12: Nursery of the Stars: the Interstellar Medium and
Star Formation
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Q1) What is the best evidence that giant molecular clouds formed through collisions of large gas flows?
A) the Doppler shifts of segments of the clouds
B) the balance between gravity and pressure in the clouds
C) the long lifetimes of the clouds
D) the magnetic field structure within clouds
Q2) What is a proplyd?
A) the smallest form of molecular cloud
B) a bright knot in a protostellar jet
C) the visible result of colliding winds
D) none of the above
Q3) Astronomers have not found any stars more massive than about 125 MS n in the Milky Way.What stops more massive stars from forming?
Q4) What physical principle is responsible for accretion disks forming around protostars?
A) hydrostatic equilibrium
B) conservation of angular momentum
C) blackbody radiation
D) Wien's law
Q5) Name two sources for the energy radiated by brown dwarfs.
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Chapter 13: To the Graveyard of Stars: the End Points of Stellar Evolution
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Q1) An X-ray burster is most analogous to a(n):
A) gamma-ray burst.
B) nova.
C) active galactic nucleus.
D) Type II supernova.
Q2) What causes a planetary nebula?
A) shocks from colliding winds around dying stars
B) planetary collisions
C) supernovae
D) fragmentation of giant molecular clouds
Q3) Which of the following is closest in radius to a neutron star?
A) Earth
B) the United States
C) a small city
D) a football stadium
Q4) Which of the following stellar endpoints has NOT been observed?
A) a white dwarf from a 0.8 M<sub>Sun</sub> star
B) a supernova from a 25 M<sub>Sun</sub> star
C) a white dwarf from a 1 M<sub>Sun</sub> star
D) a white dwarf from a 6 M<sub>Sun</sub> star
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Chapter 14: Down the Rabbit Hole: Relativity and Black Holes
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Q1) The first evidence for supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies came from:
A) gravitational lensing.
B) their effects on nearby stars.
C) their light output.
D) galactic winds.
Q2) Two observers in different frames of reference will measure different: A) laws of physics.
B) values for the speed of light.
C) values for the speed of material objects.
D) values for Newton's gravitational constant.
Q3) How do matter-energy and space-time affect each other,according to general relativity?
Q4) What do astronomers believe exists in the center of nearly every galaxy?
A) a gamma-ray burst
B) a massive dust cloud
C) a star-forming region
D) a black hole
Q5) Does gravitational lensing occur in Newton's formulation of gravity? Why or why not?
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Q1) According to present observations,how does the Milky Way's black hole compare to those at the center of powerful active galactic nuclei?
A) The Milky Way's black hole is much more massive.
B) The Milky Way's black hole is not spinning.
C) The Milky Way's black hole is much less massive.
D) The Milky Way's black hole is spinning more rapidly.
Q2) During the formation of the Milky Way,why did the gas collapse to a disk while the stars remained in a spherical distribution?
Q3) Astronomers detect an old star with a velocity perpendicular to the Sun's 1 kpc from Earth.Of which component is it most likely a part?
A) halo
B) disk
C) bulge
D) bar
Q4) Which of the following components of the Milky Way formed first?
A) stars in the disk
B) globular clusters
C) the bulge
D) the bar
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Chapter 16: A Universe of Galaxies
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Q1) A bright source doubles its luminosity over the course of a week.How large is the source?
A) 12 AU
B) 1200 AU
C) 0.12 parsecs
D) 1.2 parsecs
Q2) Which galactic phenomenon is triggered by the same process as spiral structure?
A) galactic bars
B) globular clusters
C) tidal streams
D) the formation of spirals from ellipticals
Q3) What property of a Type Ia supernova must be measured in order to use it as a standard candle?
A) luminosity
B) light curve
C) color
D) redshift
Q4) How can the velocity dispersion and radius of an elliptical galaxy determine its mass?
Q5) What are the four major classes of galaxies in the Universe?
Page 19
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Chapter 17: The Cosmic Web: the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
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Q1) Why do redshift surveys require so much telescope time?
Q2) A galaxy cluster consists of 1,000 galaxies within a radius of 2.5 Mpc,traveling at a typical velocity of 1,000 km/s.If the average stellar mass of a cluster galaxy is 10¹¹ M<sub>Sun</sub>,what fraction of the cluster's mass is NOT stellar?
A) 5/6
B) 9/10
C) 1/2
D) 1/10
Q3) Why do many galaxies that are gravitationally lensed by galaxy clusters look like arcs of a circle?
A) Arc-like galaxies are more likely to be lensed.
B) asymmetries in the cluster
C) They are close behind the cluster.
D) They are the most luminous galaxies behind the cluster.
Q4) Why are most galaxies inside clusters ellipticals or lenticular galaxies?
Q5) A group of galaxies with a diameter of 2 Mpc has 40 galaxies with typical velocities of 200 km/s.If the group is just a chance coincidence,how long will it last?
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Q6) Why were quasars most common 10 billion years ago?
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Chapter 18: Cosmology
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Q1) What is the total density parameter of our Universe?
A) W = 0.1
B) W = 0.3
C) W = 1
D) W = 2
Q2) An astronomer measures the properties of an alternate universe.He or she discovers that the angles of a triangle in this universe add up to more than 180 degrees.What can he or she deduce about the universe's density?
Q3) If dark energy continues to dominate the expansion of the Universe,it will:
A) recollapse.
B) decelerate until it stops expanding.
C) accelerate for a time and then recollapse.
D) enter another inflationary era.
Q4) To what accuracy are the relative densities of dark energy and dark matter known,according to current cosmological measurements?
A) to 1 part in 10,000
B) to 1 part in 100
C) within a factor of 2
D) to an order of magnitude
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