Astronomy Flashcards
What is the smallest constellation in the night sky, not discovered by European astronomers until the 16th century?
Crux, the “Southern Cross,” only subtends 68 square degrees in the night sky. The Ancient Greeks knew about Crux, thanks to their access to Egypt and North Africa, but it’s not visible farther north, so medieval Europe didn’t re-discover it until the Age of Exploration began.
Sharing its name with an old Chevy model, this brighest star of Lyra will one day become the North Star.
Vega
The stars Mintaka, Alnilam and Alintak comprise what celestial body?
Orion’s Belt
The Morgan-Keenan system classifies stars using seven different letters. Which letter describes Earth’s Sun?
G (G-Type)
Betelgeuse, Rigel, and Bellatrix are the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma stars of what constellation?
Orion
Mons Huygens, the moon’s tallest peak, is in this lunar range; Monte Corno is the tallest in the earthy one.
Montes Apenninus
This is the moon’s tallest peak.
Mons Huygens
This is the Latin name for the large, dark lunar plains that early observers thought were seas.
Lunar mare / maria
Its name means “fear” and this moon orbits closest to a planet’s surface of any moon in the solar system.
Phobos
Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra are four of the five moons of what celestial object?
Pluto (Charon is the fifth moon)
The term “dog days of summer” is derived from the heliacal rising of what star?
Sirius
For a body orbiting the earth, the closest and furthest points of the orbit from earth are the perigee and apogee. What are the equivalent terms for the closest and furthest points of a body’s orbit from the sun?
Perihelion, Aphelion
Some observatories precisely mix light from separate telescopes to achieve the resolution of a single, much larger one. This process, called aperture synthesis, is a specific example of what 14-letter term that has been obscured in the attached image?
Interferometry
The desire to observe what roughly twice-per-century events, and hence accurately determine the distance from the Earth to the Sun, inspired the construction of multiple far-flung observatories in 1761 and 1769, including one in Tahiti during the first voyage of Captain James Cook?
Transits of Venus
The region of the outer solar system beyond Neptune’s orbit, which contains thousands of small, icy celestial bodies, has what name, after the 20th-century astronomer who proposed that such items might have formed there?
Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud
This constellation’s name is Latin for “the charioteer” and is associated with various mythological beings, including Erichthonius and Myrtilus.
Auriga
The unit of astronomical length known as a parsec, equal to 3.26 light years, is a term derived from what other two words, which factor into the distance on which the unit is based?
Parallax, Second (Arcsecond)
Deneb is a name for the brightest star of what large, northern hemisphere constellation, which is represented as a swan?
Cygnus
The largest storm system on Jupiter (and in the entire solar system), which rotates once every six days and is large enough to contain three Earths, is best known by what straightforward three-word name?
Great Red Spot
What are the names of the two brightest stars that make up the “Twins” in the constellation Gemini?
Castor, Pollux
The Apollo missions brought back more than 800 pounds of moon rocks and showed that the dark, flat lunar areas known as seas are not water, but this common volcanic rock that also makes up most of the oceanic crust here on Earth.
Basalt
What is the technical name for what is commonly called a “shooting star”?
Meteor
A meteor that reaches the earth’s surface and is not burned up by friction is a meteorite. What is the accompanying term for any meteor that could possibly, but has not yet, collided with the earth’s atmosphere?
Meteoroid
What objects did Galileo discover in 1610, calling them “ears” and asking, “Has [he] swallowed his children”?
Nobody is a more famous child-swallower than the Roman god Saturn. In this case, Galileo had noticed weird bulges on the sides of the planet Saturn, which we now know to be its rings.
