Astronomy

Question 1

How long is 1 Astronomical Unit? (In miles and light minutes)

Answer 1

93 million miles or 8 light minutes

Question 2

What is the nearest star, and how far away is it?

Answer 2

Proxima Centauri, and it’s 4.2 light years away

Question 3

What is the conversion rate between light years and parsecs?

Answer 3

1 parsec = 3.3 light years

Question 4

In light years, what is the size of the Milky Way?

Answer 4

75,000 light years

Question 5

How long ago was the Solar System formed?

Answer 5

4.567 billion years ago

Question 6

What important discovery about the universe did Edwin Hubble make?

Answer 6

He discovered that the faster away a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it is receding.

Question 7

What is the Doppler effect?

Answer 7

As an object comes towards you, the waves are compressed and the frequency goes up. As it goes away, the waves are elongated and the frequency goes down.

Question 8

How does the Doppler effect relate to light?

Answer 8

Redshift and blueshift- as an object comes closer it appears redder, and vice versa.

Question 9

What is beta decay?

Answer 9

When a nucleus shoots off a beta ray and a neutrino.

Question 10

What is CMB, and why is it important?

Answer 10

CMB stands for Cosmic Microwave Background, and it is the radiation leftover from the Big Bang.

Question 11

How are solar systems formed?

Answer 11

Clouds of gases collapse to form a star and a disk, planets form and clear out their orbits, and gas and debris leave the system.

Question 12

What kinds of stars are most present nearby to Earth?

Answer 12

M dwarfs- small, cool stars

Question 13

How do stars produce light?

Answer 13

Protons smash into one another, and they release energy and light.

Question 14

What happens to a star around the size of the Sun after it runs out of gas?

Answer 14

The star expands into a red giant.

Question 15

What is a white dwarf?

Answer 15

A white dwarf is an object with the mass of the star but the size of the Earth. They are incredibly dense, and have large amounts of gravity.

Question 16

What happens to a star much larger than the sun?

Answer 16

It becomes a supernova nebula, and then a neutron star, an object with the mass of the Sun, but the size of the city. Or it becomes a black hole, an object with a lot of density but no mass.

Question 17

How do we detect exoplanets with laws of gravity? And how does the Doppler effect relate?

Answer 17

When a planet orbits a star, in fact both objects orbit a point in the center. So if we observe a star “wobbling”, we can infer that there is a planet orbiting it.

The Doppler effect allows us to measure the gravitational wobble using redshift and blueshift.