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Astronomy
Unit Three
144 Points
Choose the best answer
1. What is Io?
a) Jupiter’s closest big moon
b) Jupiter’s second big moon
c) Saturn’s moon with an atmosphere
d) Saturn’s moon with liquid water
2. What did Voyager observe on Io?
a) dry streambeds
b) geysers of water
c) erupting volcanoes
d) powerful winds
3. What causes Io’s odd behavior?
a) warm water
b) gravity
c) magnetic fields
d) sunlight
4. What is Europa?
a) Jupiter’s closest big moon
b) Jupiter’s second big moon
c) Saturn’s moon with an atmosphere
d) Saturn’s moon with liquid water
5. What features are visible on the surface of Europa?
a) more craters than its neighbors
b) volcanoes
c) cracked water ice
d) dry streambeds
6. How is the geologic activity on Triton different from Earth?
a) lava erupts
b) sulfur compounds erupt
c) nitrogen erupts
d) water erupts
7. How old is our solar system?
a) 5000 years
b) 15 billion years
c) 4.55 billion years
d) 13.5 million years
8. What is “right ascension”?
a) How high in the sky an object is
b) How far east an object is
c) Sky coordinates that run perpendicular to the celestial equator
d) Sky coordinates that run parallel to the celestial equator
9. What is “declination”?
a) How high in the sky an object is
b) How far east an object is
c) Sky coordinates that run perpendicular to the celestial equator
d) Sky coordinates that run parallel to the celestial equator
10. What is retrograde motion?
a) Backward motion
b) Slow motion
c) Forward motion
d) Old motion
11. What causes retrograde motion?
a) the solar wind
b) gravity
c) Different ages of planets
d) Differences in orbital speed
12. Why does Earth have an atmosphere, while Mars has almost none?
a) Just how they were made
b) Earth has a magnetic field
c) The water on Mars evaporated
d) Earth has the greenhouse effect
13. Why is Mars red?
a) Its iron core froze
b) Iron oxide in the atmosphere
c) Rust in the soil
d) It is an illusion caused by refraction
14. What is the atmosphere of Mars made of?
a) O2
b) N2
c) H2O
d) CO2
15. If Mars had oxygen once, what could have happened to it?
a) It made rust
b) It combined with H2 to make water
c) It froze in the soil
d) It was magnetized
16. What is the primary goal of Spirit and Opportunity on Mars?
a) To test if the volcanoes are still active
b) To test for life
c) To find proof that Mars had water
d) To find proof of iron oxide
17. How do we know that Mars had water once, besides the apparent dry river and
lake beds?
a) Deuterium in the atmosphere
b) Frozen water
c) Hematite blueberries and sulfate salts
d) Droplets of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide
18. What means did Voyager use to get to Saturn?
a) Ionic propulsion
b) Rocket power
c) Gravitational slingshot
d) Solar panels
19. What formed Saturn’s rings?
a) A disintegrated moon
b) A comet that hit Jupiter
c) Volcanic eruptions
d) Titan’s atmosphere
20. Why is it unlikely that we will visit Uranus or Neptune again in the next 100
years?
a) There is no reason to
b) The planets won’t be lined up
c) NASA is trying to send astronauts back to Mars
d) The asteroid belt is in the way
21. What is “plate tectonics”
a) balancing spinning plates on wooden dowels
b) the division of technology in NASA’s departments
c) the movement of huge pieces of crust of a planet
d) all planets are the same age
22. Why would scientists look for life on Europa?
a) It has warm water
b) It has an atmosphere like Earth
c) Spectrographs have detected life’s chemical signature
d) It has volcanoes
23. How could a rock from Mars end up on Earth?
a) The rovers sent it back
b) Astronauts brought it back
c) A meteorite collision ejected material
d) It was carried by comets
24. How could you prove a rock was from Mars?
a) Radioactive dating
b) Martian air was trapped in its crystals
c) rust
d) compare its density and mass to known samples
25. Name the two moons in our solar system that have possible liquid water, under a
crust of ice.
a) Io and Titan
b) Titan and Europa
c) Enceladus and Europa
d) Io and Enceladus
26. What is unusual about the cratering on Enceladus?
a) Very few craters
b) Too many craters
c) They are volcanic
d) They overlap
27. What was the important thing in the tail of comet Wild II?
a) nickel-iron
b) zircons
c) amino acids
d) H2O
28. What was the “Heavy Bombardment”?
a) When Earth was hit by a lot of meteorites and comets
b) The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
c) When the solar wind was stronger
d) When Earth passed through the asteroid belt
29. Where did the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere come from?
a) brought by comets
b) it was always there
c) the oceans
d) photosynthesis
30. What does SETI do?
a) Looks for planets around other stars
b) Listens for aliens
c) Looks for near earth asteroids
d) Counts craters on moons
31. What was interesting about ALH84001?
a) it landed on Venus
b) it crashed into Jupiter
c) it had possible bacteria fossils
d) it killed the dinosaurs
32. What did Phoenix do?
a) flew around Saturn
b) dug for H2O at the north pole of Mars
c) crashed into Io
d) landed on Europa
33. What four solid bodies in the solar system have permanent atmospheres?
a) Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus
b) Earth, Pluto, Mars, Uranus
c) Venus, Jupiter, Earth, Saturn
d) Earth, Mars, Venus, Titan
34. What are Saturn’s rings made of?
a) Rocks
b) CH4 (methane)
c) H2O ice
d) hydrogen and helium
35. What is Enceladus erupting?
a) SiO2
b) CH4
c) H2O
d) H2, He
36. Where is “New Horizons” going?
a) Uranus
b) Neptune
c) Pluto
d) the Oort Cloud
37. Does Pluto have air? Explain.
a) yes, only in summer when it is warmer
b) no, it has too little gravity
c) no, the solar wind has blown it away
d) yes, tons of methane
38. How thick are Saturn’s rings (a meter is a little bigger than 3 feet)?
a) about 1 meter
b) about 10 meters
c) about 1 kilometer
d) about 100,000 kilometers
39. What is the habitable zone?
a) the area of a solar system that can support living humans
b) the area of a solar system that can have liquid water
c) the frame of mind that causes addiction
d) the part of the sky that has zodiac constellations
40. Why is there no liquid water on Mars?
a) the solar wind evaporated it
b) too little gravity
c) too much gravity
d) too cold and too little air pressure
41. What is a stromatolite?
a) a relatively huge structure built by microbes
b) a stone that is found that seems out of place with its surroundings
c) an asteroid that hits planets
d) one of the first space telescopes
42. What do cyanobacteria do?
a) turn oxygen into carbon dioxide
b) create water
c) photosynthesis
d) ionize oxygen into water
43. Why was the discovery of Eris a disruption?
a) it caused asteroids to be knocked out of the main belt
b) it created the formation of a study group to evaluate Kuiper Belt Objects
c) it caused Pluto to be demoted to a dwarf planet
d) it crashed into Jupiter and proved comets still hit planets
44. Around what star was the first exoplanet discovered?
a) Sirius
b) UBH 5401
c) 51 Pegasi
d) Apophis
45. Which four solid bodies in the solar system have permanent atmospheres?
a) Venus, Earth, Mars, Titan
b) Earth, Moon, Venus, Jupiter
c) Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter
d) Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
46. What is DepthX?
a) a drill designed to drill into the nitrogen geysers of Triton
b) a lander being built to land on Olympus Mons
c) a submarine being developed for Europa
d) a detector that tells you when you are 10 m deep
47. How could the giant impact of Earth affect water on Earth?
a) it would have added more “heavy water” (deuterium oxide) to Earth’s water
b) it would have formed huge craters for water to fill in and make oceans
c) it would have brought a huge amount of water to Earth
d) it would have vaporized all of the surface water
48. How can you date the relative age of Saturn’s rings? Where are they younger?
a) measure the density. closer in
b) look for levels of pollution. farther out
c) measure their speed. closer in
d) carbon dating. farther out