Download Objects in the Kuiper belt are made mostly of rock and

Harpell/Astro 10
Quiz 9
1. What is following is false regarding the differences between objects in the Oort Cloud, Kuiper
Belt, and Asteroid Belt?
a) Objects in the Kuiper belt are made mostly of rock and metal.
b) Objects in the asteroid belt are made mostly of rock and metal.
c) Objects in the Oort cloud contain large proportions of ice.
d) Objects in the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane as the
planets, but objects in the Oort cloud do not.
2. A rock found on Earth that crashed down from space is called ______.
a) an impact b) meteorite c) an asteroid d) meteor
3. Which statement is NOT thought to be true of all comets in our solar system?
a) All comets are leftover planetesimals that originally condensed beyond the frost line in the
solar nebula.
b) All comets are icy in composition.
c) Comets always have tails.
d) All comets orbit the Sun.
4. What is Charon?
a) a captured moon of Neptune
b) the largest of Pluto's three known moons
c) the largest known Kuiper belt comet
d) the largest known asteroid
5. According to current evidence, Pluto is best explained as ______.
a) a terrestrial planet that is surprisingly far from the Sun
b) a very small Jovian planet
c) a large member of the Kuiper belt
d) an escaped moon of Jupiter or Saturn
6.
a)
b)
c)
d)
What is Eris?
An extra solar planet ejected by another solar system and captured by ours.
A moon of Pluto.
An icy object that orbits in the Kuiper belt and is larger than Pluto
The largest known asteroid.
7
Which of the following statements best describes the size of the largest?
asteroid, Ceres?
a) It is a little less than half the diameter of our Moon.
b) It is no larger than a typical mountain on one of the terrestrial planets.
c) It is smaller than the Jovian planets but larger than terrestrial planets.
d) It is about the size of a terrestrial planet.
8. If we could put all the asteroids together, their total mass would be ______.
a)
b)
c)
d)
about the mass of Earth
much less than the mass of any terrestrial planet
about the mass of Mercury
greater than the mass of Earth but less than the mass of Jupiter
9. Gaps in the asteroid belt (often called Kirkwood gaps) are caused by ______.
a) tidal forces from the Sun
b) the competing gravitational tugs of Mars and Jupiter
c) orbital resonances with Jupiter
d) tidal forces from Jupiter
10. When you see the bright flash of a meteor, what are you actually seeing?
a) a star that has suddenly shot across the sky
b) the flash that occurs when a speeding rock from space hits the ground
c) the glow from a pea-size particle and the surrounding air as the particle burns up in our
atmosphere
11. In science fiction movies, spaceships are often shown dodging through large
numbers of closely spaced, boulder-size objects. Which of the following
real things in our solar system would look most like such science
fiction dangers?
a) the Oort cloud
b) the asteroid belt c) the rings of Saturn
12. Which of the following objects are probably NOT located in the same region of the solar
system in which they originally formed?
a) Pluto
b) Oort cloud comets c) asteroids of the asteroid belt
d) Kuiper belt comets
13. Suppose there were no solar wind. How would the appearance of a comet in our
inner solar system be different?
a) It would be much brighter in appearance. B) It would have only one tail
c) It would not have a nucleus.
D) It would not have a coma.
14. Suppose we discover a new comet on an orbit that brings it closer to the Sun
than Mercury every 125 years. What can we conclude?
a) It came from the Oort cloud.
b) It has a coma and tail during most of each orbit.
c) It has been on its current orbit for only a very short time compared
d) to the age of our solar system.
e) It came from the Kuiper belt.
15. When we see a meteor shower, it means that _________.
a) an Earth-approaching asteroid has recently come very close to our planet
b) Earth is crossing the orbit of a comet
c) the solar wind is unusually strong
d) you should duck and run for cover to avoid being blasted on the head by a rock from space
16.
Which of the following is NOT a piece of evidence supporting the idea that
Pluto is a large comet of the Kuiper belt?
a) Pluto is not the largest object orbiting in the region of the Kuiper belt.
b) Pluto's orbit is very similar to the orbits of other known Kuiper belt comets.
c) Triton, which must once have orbited the Sun before being captured by Neptune, is
significantly larger than Pluto.
d) Pluto's composition appears to match that of other known Kuiper belt comets.
e) Pluto grows a coma and a long tail when it is at the point in its orbit closest to the Sun.
17.
The discovery of Eris __________.
a) was surprising, due to its "backwards" orbit around the Sun
b) was surprising, since we thought we knew about all large objects in the solar system
c) was not surprising, because other Kuiper belt objects approaching the size of Pluto had
already been discovered
d) was not surprising, because the existence of a massive "Planet X" had been predicted nearly
a century ago
18 Suppose that large Jovian planets had never formed in our solar system. Which of the following
would most likely be true?
a) Neither the asteroid belt nor Oort cloud would exist.
b) Earth would have suffered far fewer impacts.
c) There would be a large empty region in our solar system between the orbit of Mars and the
Kuiper belt.
d) Earth would orbit much closer to the Sun.
19. Which group of Astronomers have found nearly all the large TNO’s in recent years?
a) Brown, Trujillo et al, at Caltech
b) Sparks, Gregg et al, at Princeton
c) Harpell, Ankoviak, et al at LPC
d) Hawkings, Penrose, at all at Cambridge
20. Which of the following is a TNO with the greatest Aphelion distance?
a) Pluto b) Quorar
c) Sedna
d) Eris
21. Which of the following is a “typical” distance of objects in the Oort Cloud?
a) 50,000 AU
b) 5,000 AU c) 500 AU
d) 500,000 AU
22. Which of the following is a moon of Uranus?
a) Miranda b) Ariel
c) Umbrial d) Titania
e) all of these
23. Compared with the largest Jovian Moon, the largest Uranian Moon is about:
a) the same size b) half as large c) about 1/3 as large d) about 1/10 as large
24. what does hang time have to do with Oort Cloud objects?
a) they just like to move slowly all the time
b) they like to associate with one another
c) their move so slowly at aphelion that they are typically found at great distances from the
sun.
d) they move so rapidly at perihelion that they typically are found near the sun.
25. what happened to comet Enke as it passed near the sun?
a) it lost its tail
b) it vaporized completely c) it suddenly grew a much longer tail