Astronomy MCQ Questions Answers

1. The cno cycle in high-mass main-sequence stars burns ________ to ________in their cores.

2. Most of the frozen ice in a comet's ____ vaporizes after the comet's many trips around the sun.

3. Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model for the solar system primarily because ________.

4. The structure of a comet is considered to be like a large, ____, or a mass of frozen ice and rock.

5. Periodic variations in earth's orbit that can cause natural climate changes are called _________.

6. The fact that mercury has no atmosphere is evidence that it _____.

7. The energy that stirs the circulation in jupiter's atmosphere comes from _____.

8. In an open and grassy pine savannah, fires _____.

9. Water makes a good coolant because it has a ____

10. Neptune can be divided into a total of ______________ different layers.

11. A comets plasma tail always points directly away from the sun because __________.

12. Antenna size of tvs and cell phones is related to the size of the _________ used by the technology.

13. When we refer to the solar thermostat, we are referring to the idea that __________.

14. Tycho failed to detect ______ for the nova of 1572 indicating it was ______.

15. The sun lies _______ the disk of our milky way galaxy.

16. The _____ is a vast, spherical array of long period comet nuclei far beyond the orbit of neptune.

17. The ____ of a telescope is a measure of its ability to increase brightness.

18. Stars in the local sky that never cross below the horizon during the year are called ________.

19. A small group of atoms does not collapse into a clump because ________ quickly disperses them.

20. A blackbody curve relates the wavelength of emitted light to _____.

21. A __________ becomes a __________ when repeated testing of its predictions does not disprove it.

22. ________ meteorites are thought to be analogous in composition to earth's core.

23. The greenhouse effect on venus is due to ________ in its atmosphere.

24. Titan shares all of the following geological features with earth except ________.

25. The sun illuminates ________________________ of the moon at all times.

26. The flattened circular part of the galaxy is called the galactic _________.

27. Most irregular galaxies are thought to have formed _____.

28. When we say that liquid water is unstable on mars today, we mean that ________.

29. The name given to the shape of a sagging rope supported at its ends is a __________.

30. Measuring the amount of deuterium in the universe allows us to set a limit on _________.

31. Mars has two moons that are most similar in character to ________.

32. The sun will exhaust its nuclear fuel in about ________.

33. The imaginary boundary between the earth and sky is called the _________.

34. The orbits of ____ lie closer to the sun than does earth's orbit.

35. The length of daylight on the moon is about ________.

36. When we say that the sun is a ball of plasma, we mean that ________.

37. The radio source ________ is located in a place consistent with the center of our galaxy.

38. The martian "blueberries" are ________.

39. The light-gathering power of a 4-meter telescope is __________ than that of a 2-meter telescope.

40. The leading hypothesis for venus's lack of a global magnetic field is its ________.

41. The frequency of sunspots and related solar activity is ________.

42. The ________ magnitude of a star depends directly upon its luminosity and distance.

43. That earth ____ , evidence that earth differentiated.

44. On the graphs shown, you can identify an ice age by looking for __________.

45. Most asteroids inhabit the asteroid belt between the planets ________.

46. If the 1908 tunguska impact had instead struck a city, it likely would have ________.

47. Gaps in the asteroid belt (often called kirkwood gaps) are caused by ______.

48. Comets falling into the inner solar system from the ____ are called long-period comets.

49. Among discovered meteorites, we have found some with all the following origins except _________.

50. According to current evidence, pluto is best explained as ______.

51. A main-sequence star twice as massive as the sun would last __________.

52. The habitable zone refers to ________.

53. The debris from a supernova explosion is called a supernova _________.

54. In addition to earth, the planet ________ shows clear evidence of water erosion.

55. The axes on a hertzsprung-russell (h-r) diagram represent _________.

56. When we see a meteor shower, it means that ________.

57. A zero-age main-sequence star is one that can __________.

58. The astrology practiced by those who cast predictive horoscopes can be tested by __________

59. The area of the earth reached by a satellites transmission is referred to as its _____.

60. Stars with masses less than ____ produce most of their energy via the proton-proton chain.

61. If a star is large, it will remain in the main sequence _____ a small star.

62. If a star has a low luminosity and also a high surface temperature then it must have __________.

63. For los angeles, during the autumnal equinox there are about _____ hours of daylight.

64. By examining the widths of the spectral lines we can find information about a star's _________.

65. During its red giant stage, the radius of the sun will be about __________.

66. During a solar eclipse, the _____ casts a small circular shadow on the ____.

67. Directly above the earth's equator lies the ______________ in the sky.

68. Dinosaurs went extinct, probably because of an impact, about __________ ago.

69. The model of the solar system changed, because _______.

70. The biggest surprise from the new horizons flyby of pluto was learning that pluto _________.

71. The inner boundary of the sun's habitable zone today is ________.

72. A galaxy that has a shape similar to a football is a(n) ____ galaxy.

73. Stars that are not very hot but give off a lot of light are __________.

74. According to the diagram, the approximate abundance of oxygen atoms in the galaxy is __________.

75. The existence of a core-mantle-crust interior structure tells us that a world __________.

76. A surge in __________ directly triggers ovulation

77. _________is one of the top three factors associated with fatal crashes.

78. Degenearcy pressure arises when ________.

79. The great contribution of nicholas copernicus was to ________.

80. Based on their inability to detect stellar parallax, the ancient greeks concluded that _________.

81. Rigels radius is about _____ times the suns radius.

82. According to the "rare earth hypothesis," ________.

83. Collisions between galaxies typically unfold over a period of ______.

84. Because of the conservation of angular momentum, as a star collapses ________.

85. Based on this diagram, "red sequence" galaxies are __________ than "blue cloud" galaxies.

86. As telescopes become larger and larger, astronomers favor ________.

87. Micas like muscovite and biotite break along flat planes because _____.

88. A ____ has a few million light sensitive diodes in an array typically about a half-inch square.

89. Visible light from a distant star can be spread into a spectrum by using a glass prism or ______.

90. Compared to the underlying photosphere and chromosphere, the corona is _____ in temperature.

91. The energy in the atmospheres of most of the jovian planets comes ___________,

92. Any place where groundwater naturally flows out of earths surface is termed a(n) ________.

93. Craters on the surface of the moon are caused by the impact of _______________.

94. Radio telescopes measure the galaxys distribution of _____.

95. Radio telescopes would not represent a good choice for astronomical study of ________.

96. The energy balance that contributes to the solar thermostat is a balance between __________.

97. Parallax measurements of the distances to the nearest stars use _____ as a baseline.

98. Most pulsars are observed only as ________ sources.

99. In essence, the kepler mission searched for extrasolar planets by ____________.

100. We can study how galaxies evolve because ______.