|
Back
Know the following:
Chapter 1: The Scale of the Cosmos
The distance from the earth to the sun.
What an AU is.
What our sun is.
What a galaxy consists of.
The relative sizes of units of measures such as a yard, kilometer, light year,
etc.
How far it is to stars.
Chapter 2: User’s Guide to the Sky
What is circumpolar?
What is the celestial equator, the zenith?
How were stars named?
What is stellar magnitude?
How many seconds of arc in a degree?
What is a sextant?
Chapter 3: Circles around the Earth
What was Tycho’s model of the universe? His greatest contribution to astronomy?
Which planets exhibit retrograde motion?
Why was the Copernican system still inaccurate in its predictions?
What was the significance of Galileo’s observations of the moon, Jupiter, and
Venus?
What are Kepler’s first two laws?
Why does our moon move in a circular orbit?
What did Newton conclude about the force of gravity?
Chapter 4: Astronomical Telescopes and Instruments
Know which wavelengths are longer or shorter for radio, infrared, optical, UV,
X-rays.
Which wavelengths cannot penetrate our atmosphere?
What is a charge-coupled device, a CCD?
What are equatorial and alt-az mounts? What drives do they need?
What is an achromatic lens?
What is a grating?
For visible light, are longer wavelengths red or blue?
Are red or blue photons more energetic?
Chapter 5: Sunlight and Sun Atoms
What is granulation and what causes it?
What is differential rotation?
What is the Zeeman effect?
Are sunspots dark? Why? Do they occur in cycles? How long?
What are prominences, the chromosphere, solar flares?
Where does the sun’s energy come from?
Chapter 6: The Family of Stars
What is parallax?
What are apparent and absolute visual magnitude?
What is luminosity, what does it depend on?
What are white dwarfs, M dwarfs? Where are they on the HR diagram?
What is the main sequence?
What is the center of mass of a binary system? What is a spectrographic binary?
Which stars have the most mass and the least mass?
Chapter 7: The Structure and Formation of Stars
What is opacity? What is convection?
What are brown dwarfs?
What is the ZAMS (the zero-age main sequence)?
What causes the mass-luminosity relationship?
How does the interstellar medium effect starlight?
How are stars born in dense molecular clouds?
Chapter 8: The Death of Stars
What happens when core hydrogen is exhausted?
Are supergiants rare? If so, why?
How are planetary nebulae and supernovae remnants related?
Who was Chandrasekhar and why was his limit important?
Why is iron the end of the line?
What are novae? What are supernovae?
Chapter 9: The Milky Way Galaxy
How do stars orbit in the Milky Way’s disk?
Is our galaxy surrounded by dark matter? How do we know?
How do old and young stars differ in metalicity? Why?
What are Population I and II stars? Where are they found? How do they differ?
What are Cepheids and why are they important?
What is at the center of our galaxy? How do we know? Where is the center?
Chapter 10: Galaxies
What is the Hubble Law? Lookback time?
What is gravitational lensing?
What is dark matter?
What happens when galaxies collide? Do they collide very often?
What are the Magellanic Clouds?
What is the local group? What is the Virgo cluster?
Chapter 11: Cosmology
Why is the sky dark at night?
What is quintessence?
What is the Hubble time?
What are the Big Bang and Steady State theories?
What is recombination? What is the cosmic background radiation?
What is the critical density of the universe?
Why might the expansion of the universe be accelerating?
Chapter 12: Origin of the Solar System
What characterizes terrestrial planets?
What are meteors and meteor showers?
What are comets and in which direction do their tails point?
What is accretion? What is a gas disk?
What is outgassing?
What is the relationship between crater density and age?
How have extrasolar planets been detected?
Chapter 13: Comparative Planetology (inner)
Does Mercury have an unusually large iron core?
What caused the long ridges on Mercury?
What primarily affects the surface of Venus? Why is it so hot?
Why isn’t Earth as hot as Venus?
Is water flowing on Mars? Why are the volcanoes on Mars so big?
Why are the moons of Mars so small?
Chapter 14: Comparative Planetology (outer)
What is Jupiter’s surface and interior composed of?
Why is Jupiter still hot?
Why are their volcanoes on Io?
Why are there so few craters visible on Europa?
What are shepherd moons?
Is Uranus tilted strangely?
Does Uranus have a metallic core like Jupiter?
How did my friend Bob Millis discover the rings of Uranus?
Chapter 15: Life on Other Worlds
When did complex life appear on Earth?
Where did the first life appear on earth? How long ago?
Who was Stanley Miller? What did he do?
What is the habitable zone? Do we live in one?
What limits the number of communicative civilizations in our galaxy?
What is the “water hole”? How might we communicate with other life?
What types of stars are most likely to host planets with life?
What was ALH 84001?
|