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60 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
The presures of the atmosphers at the surfaces of Mercury, Venus, and Mars, in terms of the pressure at the surface of earth (known as 1 atmosphere) are
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0; almost 100 atmosphere;1/100 atmosphere
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On the basis of its appearance and general properties , which planetary body could be described as the Earth's Twin
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Venus; anout the same mass and diameter, dense atmosphere, and cloud shrouded
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The auroral display of the Northern and Southern lights , high in the Earth's atmosphere, is caused
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Solar wind electrons hitting the high atmosphere after being accelerated in the magnetic fields of the magnetosphere
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What is the only spacecraft to have landed on the surface of an asteroid
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NEAR Shoemaker
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What is a proplyd
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A protoplanetary disk , such as those observed around some stars in the Orion nebula
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The sun is about a thousand times more massive than the planet Jupiter. When, then, does it have about the same average density
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The sun also has about a thousand times Jupiter's volume
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The astonomical event that is now thought to have occurred some 65 million years ago, resulting in the death of a large fraction of all living species and leaving a layer of clay containing an enhanced concentration of a rare metal, iridium, in the geological record in rocks throughout the Earth was
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The impact on the Earth of an Asteroid
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Of the 3 ways in which heat energyis transmitted from one place to another , which is (or are) important in carrying heat from the solar interior to the surface of the sun
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Radiation and Convection
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What seems to be the correct explanation for the loaw neutrino rates detected by davis and others
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The neutrinos oscillate and change their nature en route from the sun to the earth
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Mercury can be characterized as having
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a moon-like surface and an Earth-like interior
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The chemical constituent that absorbs UV radiation in the stratosphere of the earth's atmosphere, thereby heating these layers to relativly high temperatures is
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03, Ozone
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A typical comet in an elliptical orbit around the sun will lose what fraction of its mass by melting each time it passes close to the sun
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1/100
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Mercury's atmosphere is
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Almost non-existent
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Ganymede, the largest Galilean moon of Jupiter
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Is larger than Mercury but smaller than Mars
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Most if not all of Jupiter's outermost moons appear to be
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Small asteroids captured by jupiter
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At what point in its orbit would jupiter appear to be brightest when viewed from the earth
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Opposition
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Suppose that the Hubble Telescope discovered a series of planets with the following characteristics moving around a star that resembles our sun; spherical , solid, surfaces; mean densities about 4 times that of water; radi about 4000km; low density atmospheres. What would these planets be classified as, in comparison to our solar system.
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Terrestrial Planets
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How was the Mid-Atlantic Ridge formed
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Molten rock pushed up from the Earth's interior and forced two crustal plates apart
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Compared to the coma, or visible , fuzzy ball of a comet, 10^6km in diameter , the diameter of actual nucleus of the comet is
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Very small about 1/10 ^5. or 10 km
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What is pressure
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Force divided by the area over which the force acts
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How would a typical asteroid appear on a time exposer photograph of the sky as it orbited the sun if the camera were tracking the background stars
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It would produce a short trail as it moved slowly against the background stars.
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The Earth has an average density that is approximately
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5 times that of water
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What is the structure of a typical large sunspot
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A dark center surrounded by a less dark area
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The equatorial regions of the Sun are seen to rotate with an approximate period of
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about 25 days
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What is the character of the sunspot cycle
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Starting at sunspot minimum , spots first appear far from the equator , followed by new spots appearing closer to the equator as they increase in number, the latest spots being closest to the equator
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The waves that geologist and geophysicists use to probe the inside of the Earth are
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Seismic Waves
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How long is one solar day( noon to noon) on Mercury , in Earth days
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176
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The asteroid belt is believed by most astronomers to be composed of
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Rocky debris left over from the formation of the dolar system
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What is suprising about the extrasolar planets that have so far been discovered
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Many of them are giant planets like jupiter, orbititng at distances characteristic of terrestrial planets like the Earth, where giant planets cannot form
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Coronal Holes are thought to be the source of
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the Solar Wind
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What fractionof the mass of the Earth is made up of the elements hydrogen and helium
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Much less than 1%
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What would be perhaps the most stricking feature that a visiting traveler from outer space would notice upon approaching the earth, having examined the rest of the solar system
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The large quantity of liquid water on its surface
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Saturn's moon Titan is different from all other moons of the planets because
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It posseses a thick atmosphere
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In a single photgraph of a comet and its tail, the only direction that one can determine with certainty is
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The direction away from the sun because the tail is pushed in this direction by the solar wind
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Meteoric materical has been found recently in Antartica that is believed to have come from another planet.Which planet
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Mars
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Which physical feature of the planet Mercury causes the deflection of Solar wind particles away from its surface
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A magnetic field that, like the Earth's produces a magneosphere surrounding the planet
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In 1908, Hale noticed that the spectural lines from sunspots were split into closely spaced components , and concluded that the magnetic fields in the sunspots must be very strong, what is the name given to this effect
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The Zeeman Effect
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What is the basic difference between comets and asteroids
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Comets are mostly composed of ices, wheras asteroids are mainly composed of rocks
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Why did the temperature start to rise at the center of the Solar Nebula
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The nebula was contracting, which increased the speed of motion of the atoms in it
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What is plasma
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A state of matter consisting of electrons and ionized atoms
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Mercury is best seen from the Earth with the naked eye at what time of the day
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Close to dawn or dusk, when mercury is at positions of greatest east and west elongation
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How were the rings of Uranus Discovered
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From the Earth, when each ring momentarily blocked the light from a background star
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Where do the Trojan Asteroids orbit the sun
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In circular orbits at the same orbital distane as jupiter
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The smallest planet in our solar system is
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Mercury
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The rings of Saturn are seen by
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Reflected and scattered sunlight
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An impact that took place at about the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs ( and may in fact have caused their extinction) is believed to have created
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The Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula
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The Earths thermosphere is
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The outermost atmospheric layer in which ultraviolet from the sun ionizes atoms
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Who first postulated that continents drift around over the Earths Surface
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Alfred Wegener
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A small particle of rock orbiting the Sun would be called
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A Meteoroid
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Where do spicules tend to occur on the Sun
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At the boundaries of supergranules
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To what does the name Pangaea refer
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The supercontinent on a tectonic plate that split into the present North and South America, Europe, and Africa
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If the Solar wind particles have speeds of 3 X 10^6 km/hour, how long will it take for them to travel from the Sun to the Earth
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50 Hours, or about 2 days
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Suppose that you were to go back in time and explore the early solar nebula ( during the formation of the solar system). If you were to travel outward from the protosun, the FIRST solid material you would encounter would be
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Dust-sized grains of rocky material
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How have we obtained samples of Martian Rocks
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Rocks blasted off Mars by impacts and landed on Earth as meteorites
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How would " interplanetary Travel Inc." advertise a holiday to Neptune's satellite Triton
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Skate on frozen nitrogen lakes all morning, bask beside nitrogen geysers in the afternoon
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The rotation of the Sun is
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Fastest at the equator , slower at Mid-latitudes, and fastest near the poles
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Sunspots are
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Cooler, darker regions on the Sun's surface
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The order of the layers or parts of the Sun , as radius increases, is
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Radiative zone, convection zone, photosphere, chromosphere, and corona
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The albedo , or fraction of light reflected from the surface, of Mercury is
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Very low because of its dark rocky surface and absence of an atmosphere
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If the Earth is known to have an average albedo of 0.37, what percentage of the sunlight hitting the Earth is absorbed by it
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63%
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