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50 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What do we mean in astronomy by the term "horizon"? |
An imaginary plane that extends from your observing location and Earth out to the stars |
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How long does it take light to travel from our Sun to the Earth? |
8 minutes |
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An Astronomical Unit (A.U.) is the mean difference between the ___________. |
Earth & Sun |
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What is wrong with the idea Copernicus didn't want to publish his book due to fear of the Church? |
*Two of the astronomers who encouraged him were also leaders in the Roman Catholic Church *The book was dedicated and accepted by the Pope when it was published *the book was actually accepted by the Roman Catholic Church for about 100 years after it was published |
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What is wrong with an advertisement using the phrase that a product is "light years ahead of its time"? |
a light year measures distance not time |
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What is not part of the Solar System?: a) the sun b) Mercury c) Earth d) the Milky Way e) comets |
The Milky Way |
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If you are facing North and see a star directly above the north star (Polaris), in a 12 hours it will be located...? |
directly below the North Star |
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Your thumb held out at arm's length covers about ______ degree(s)? |
1 |
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During the winter where should we look for the sun to rise? |
Southeast of us |
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Galileo's observation of _________ going through phases like our moon helped prove that Copernicus and Kepler were correct. |
Venus |
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When we observe objects on the sky, what we normally measure is...? |
the angular separation of objects |
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How many hours per day are Circumpolar stars above the horizon? |
24 |
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How long is it between a FULL moon and a NEW moon? |
about 2 weeks |
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The point directly above your head is called your...? |
Zenith |
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Which statement below most accurately describes modern constellations? |
They're 88 well defined regions on the celestial sphere |
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In a picture made by keeping the shutter of a camera open, one sees streaks going 1/12 of a complete circle around polaris, how many hours was the shutter open? |
2 |
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Where on Earth can you stand and, over the course of a year, see the entire sky? |
at the equator |
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Copernicus' idea of a sun-centered solar system was rejected by some astronomers, such as Tycho Brahe, mainly based on ...? |
observation (no parallax was seen) |
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If you see the moon rising as the sun is setting, what phase must the moon be closest to? |
full |
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What book did Galileo want to use in his defense of his belief in the heliocentric solar system that he was not allowed to use? |
Bible |
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What is the ecliptic plane? a) the plane of the earth's equator b) the plane of the milky way galaxy c) the plane above the sun's equator d) the plane of the moon's orbit around the earth e) none of these |
e) none of these |
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Why was Ptolemy's model accepted for over 1400 years? |
it described observations and gave fairly accurate predictions |
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According to Kepler's first law, planets move around the sun in _______ orbits |
Elliptical |
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who proposed a sun-centered solar system many centuries before Copernicus? |
Aristarchus of Samos |
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What is the major cause of the Earth's seasons? |
The Earth is tilted 23.5 degrees on it's axis with respect to the elliptical plane |
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when a truck hits a car, the force on the car is ____ the force of the truck |
the same |
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The difference between speed and velocity is that |
velocity includes direction |
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in scientific notation 0.001234 equals |
1.234*10^-3
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why does the moon turn red during a lunar eclipse? |
red light is refracted (bent) by the earth's atmosphere so it hits the moon |
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who first measured the circumference of the earth? |
Eratosthenes before 200 BC |
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When we see mars undergoing apparent retrograde motion in our sky, what is really going on in space? |
Earth is catching up with and passing by mars in their respective orbits |
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the prefixes "micro" and "kilo" represent what powers of 10? |
-6 and +3 |
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If the moon had an orbit twice as far from the earth would we still see a total solar eclipse? |
no |
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galileo wanted to have a trial with the pope of the roman catholic church primarily because he... |
was very concerned with the way some people were using scriptures in the bible to argue scientific principles |
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when was the first sun-centered system model proposed that we know about |
over 2200 years ago |
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a planet will be moving SLOWEST when it is... |
at its furthest from the sun |
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If we know how long a planet takes to orbit the sun, then one of kepler's laws allows us to find its |
average distance from the sun |
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which of the following would have the greatest gravitational force acting on them from the earth? |
doesn't matter what items they would all be the same |
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if there were no forces acting on an object would it change its velocity or speed based on newton's laws? |
no |
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would any of galileo's observations that supported the heliocentric solar system make any difference to someone who really believed in the same philosophy as Aristotle? |
no |
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if an object is changing it's velocity, what must be true? |
there must be force present to change it's velocity |
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which type of day refers to how long it actually takes the earth to rotate once around its axis? |
sidereal day |
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in ptolemy's "earth centered" solar system, what was actually at the EXACT center of his model? |
nothing |
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When Copernicus first created his Sun centered model of the universe, it did not lead to substantially better predictions of planetary positions than the Ptolemaic model. why not? |
Copernicus used perfect circles for the orbit of the planets |
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all of the following statements are true. which one explains the reason that there is not a solar eclipse at every new moon? a)the nodes of the moon's orbit precess with an 18 year period b)The orbital plane of the moon is tilted slightly by about 5 degrees to the ecliptic plane c)the moon rotates synchronously with its revolution around the earth d) the moon goes through a complete cycle of phases about every 29 1/2 days |
The orbital plane of the moon is tilted slightly by about 5 degrees to the ecliptic plane |
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the greeks and other early astronomers believed the earth was |
a sphere |
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one of the important things that a scientific model must do is to make predictions that are |
measurable, or can be verified |
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the great contribution of tycho brahe was to _______ |
observe planetary positions with sufficient accuracy so that kepler could discover the laws of planetary motion |
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are the orbits of the planets equally spaced from the sun? |
no |
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Kepler produced an empirical model for the solar system. Who developed the first SCIENTIFIC THEORY describing the solar system |
Newton |
