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Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre
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Planet Pavilion Questions
1.
Mercury
Earth
Jupiter
Saturn
Mars
Uranus
Neptune
Venus
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
How many planets are there in the Solar System? 8
Which planet is orbiting the Sun the quickest? Mercury
Which planet is orbiting the Sun the slowest? Neptune
What force is keeping the planets in their orbits? Gravity
Do you think that our orrery shows the solar system ‘to scale’? No
A planetary nebula formed when a star like the Sun runs out of fuel.
Name: Ring Nebula. At the centre: white dwarf star
The nearest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way.
Name: Andromeda Galaxy. How far away: 2.5 million light years
What has been left behind after a big star exploded in 1054 AD.
Name: Crab Nebula. What is at the centre? Pulsar (spinning neutron star)
A 3 light-year tall pillar where new stars are forming.
Name: Carina Nebula. What is it made from? Gas and dust
Name: Orion Nebula. Description:
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Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre
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Space Pavilion Questions
1. What do the telescopes at Jodrell Bank collect instead of light? Radio Waves
2. What is the diameter of the Lovell telescope? 76.2 metres
3. Which part of you has the highest temperature? Face or head
4. Your clothes are next to your skin. Why don’t clothes appear as hot as areas of bare
skin (e.g. face)? Clothes are an insulating layer. They trap in the heat from the skin
and prevent it from escaping.
5. Heat and light pass through objects differently. There are some props near the
screen. For each of the objects, put a tick in the correct column that describes it.
Opaque to
light and heat
Transparent to
light and heat
Transparent to light,
opaque to heat
✔
Black bin bag
✔
Plastic ‘alien’ mask
Piece of paper
Opaque to light,
transparent to heat
✔
6. Which force pulls objects into black holes? Gravity
7. What force slows the ball, causing it to spiral into our model black hole? Friction
(please note friction does not exist in space, so objects can remain in orbit around
black holes, like orbiting anything else in space)
8. Describe what you see when you touch the sphere. A spark connecting your finger
to the centre of the plasma ball.
9. Explain what is happening to the flow of electricity, when you touch the sphere. The
electricity flows from the centre of the ball, into your finger. It flows through the
body, into the ground.
10. Which astronomer first discovered pulsars? Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered
the first pulsar in 1967.
11. What was the name of the first pulsar discovered? LGM1 (stood for Little Green
Man 1, as some astronomers thought the signals might be coming from alien
clocks)
12. What happens to the light level when a planet passes between the star and camera?
There is a dip in the light level detected.
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Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre
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13. Which planet (small or large) is easier to spot? Why? The larger planet is easier to
spot as it blocks out more of the star’s light. It’s also closer to the star so it creates
a dip more often.
14. How many exoplanets have astronomers discovered so far? This number increases
every day and will depend on the current figure. You can look up the current
number of confirmed exoplanets at
http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html.
15. Name two methods used to discover exoplanets. Transit method and Doppler
wobble method are the two methods mentioned in our exhibition, but there are
others. 5 are discussed at https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/interactable/11/
16. What type of object can you see through the telescope? Galaxy
17. This telescope is an example of a reflecting telescope. What does it use to focus the
beams of light? (Curved) Mirrors
18. Choose two telescopes from the global telescope map. Write down their names,
where they are and how big they are. Answers depend on the choices of the pupils
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Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre
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Planet Path Questions
1. Which of the two inner planets are most similar in size? Venus and Earth
2. The Earth disc is about 70cm in diameter. Estimate the diameter of the Mars disc.
35cm (the diameter of Mars is around half that of the Earth’s)
3. The Earth disc lies 15m from the model Sun. How far (on average) is the real Earth
from the Sun? 150 million km (1m on the Planet Path = 10 million km in reality)
4. Jupiter’s real diameter is 140,000km. What is the real diameter of the Sun? 1.4
million km (diameter of the Sun is around 10 times that of Jupiter)
5. The mass of Jupiter is 318 times the mass of the Earth. Are the following statements
true or false?
a. Jupiter creates a stronger force of gravity than Earth does.
True (gravity is created by mass, since Jupiter is more massive, it has
more gravity)
b. Jupiter has no gravity; there is no gravity in space.
False (Jupiter has a gravitational pull, you would fall through it to its
core [and be crushed and die])
c. In the Solar System, Jupiter has more gravity than anything else.
False (the Sun is the most massive object, so it has the most gravity)
d. At Jupiter’s distance from the Sun, the pull of gravity from the Sun on you
would be the same as it is when you are on the Earth.
False (this question is asking about the Sun’s gravitational pull on us,
which we don’t often think about – but it is there! Since Jupiter is
further away from the Sun than the Earth, the Sun’s gravitational pull
on you would be weaker)
6. Estimate how long it would take for a rocket to fly straight from Earth to Saturn.
About 4 years.
7. Draw an arrow on the diagram below, correctly showing the force of gravity acting
on Cassini.
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Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre
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Arrow should be a straight line from the centre of Cassini, to the centre of Saturn.
Saturn will be Cassini’s main source of gravitational pull, because of its close
proximity.
8. Which two planets have not been seen on the Planet Path yet? Uranus and Neptune
9. How far away from the Sun is the most distant planet in the Solar System? 4,500
million km (4.5 billion km)
10. There used to be another planet, but in 2006 scientists decided it wouldn’t be called
a planet anymore.
a. What is its name? Pluto
b. What kind of object is this called now? Dwarf Planet
Telescope Path Questions
1.
Sir Bernard Lovell detected these in 1945 using radar equipment. Meteors
2.
Charles Husband was the engineer who built the Lovell telescope.
3.
The Lovell telescope is so powerful it could detect a mobile phone signal on Mars.
4.
What is the diameter of the Lovell telescope’s dish? 76metres
5.
The gear racks on the Lovell telescope are recycled 15-inch gun turrets.
6.
In the 1920s astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that this was expanding. Universe
7.
The Lovell telescope is painted white to reflect sunlight and stop the metal warping.
8.
The first artificial satellite in space (tracked by the Lovell telescope). Sputnik
9.
Quasars release massive amounts of energy as gas falls into a black hole.
10. What do astronomers call the spinning collapsed core of an exploded giant star?
Pulsar
11. Using radio waves we can peer deep into the heart of our galaxy.
The bold squares spell out the word: OBSERVATORY
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