astronomy history test Flashcards
What did Kepler’s first law say?
A planet orbits in an ellipse with the sun at a focus
what was Galileo charged for?
Heresy
What was Hubble’s big moment of discovery that changed astronomy?
Our galaxy is the not entire universe
Why didn’t Einstein like Lemaitre’s big bang theory?
Because Lemaitre had a religious background and didn’t believe he knew about science.
What was Newton considered the “father” of?
Calculus and physics
Why did the ancient men start taking an interest in astronomy and why did they need it?
They needed it to tell the time to harvest their crops
If the focal points of an ellipse get further away from the center, what does that do to eccentricity?
it makes it go further from zero and closer to 1 making it flatter
how did Copernicus try to refine Ptolemy’s explanation for the retrograde “loops” of planets?
explained it with parallax instead of epicycles
moving from perihelion towards aphelion, would a planet be speeding up or slowing down?
slowing down
are the eccentricities of the planets generally closer to 0 or 1?
0, making them more circular
who was the first person to see the moon up close and see the moons of Jupiter?
galileo
who developed the first working mathematical model for gravity that made good predictions of motion?
newton
who came up with the solar system view that was accepted for over a millennium even though it was wrong?
Ptolemy
whose personality clashed with Brahe’s to the point that he could not finish his equations till after Brahe died to acquire his data?
Keppler
who created an early catalog of stars and named many of the stars?
chinese and Arabic astronomers
who proposed that matter was able to curve space-time to create the orbits that we currently observe for the planets?
Einstein
Brahe discovered a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. What controversial idea was he able to prove?
The heavens may change
who was the primary defender of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus?
galileo
who was the first to seriously propose that the universe was created from a “big bang?”
Lemaitre
who was the first to embrace the idea that the planets, stars, etc. all worked together in a “system”?
aristotle
why was there conflict between newton and hooke?
they accused each other of stealing each others work
what experiment by Edington confirmed that Einstein’s relativity might actually be right?
observed solar eclipse and saw stars behind the sun proving light could bend
what orbiting bodies tend to have the highest eccentricity in our solar system?
comets
How were the “ancients” able to tell the difference between stars and planets?
because the planets moved in retrograde, while the stars moved in prograde
how do you use Kepler’s third law to figure out the length of time for a planet to go around the sun?
p^2=a^3
what major breakthrough in the study of astronomy began around the beginning of the 1960s?
ability to space travel and put telescopes in space
where and what is Stonehedge?
an observatory in England
what was the first planet to be discovered?
uranus
why does Saturn appear to move more slowly across the sky than Mars over a long period of time?
farther away from the sun
nationality of Aristotle
greek
nationality of Copernicus?
polish
nationality of einstein and keppler?
german
nationality of galileo?
italian
what did galileo learn from dropping two balls from the leaning tower of pisa?
weight doesn’t affect gravity
Using kepler’s second law, why does the wedge nearer to the sun look different than the one that is on the other side?
objects move faster closer to the sun
why did Lemaitre have a hard time finding support for his theory?
he was a catholic priest, and was accused of not being a good scientist
what important contribution did the Egyptians and greeks leave for us?
the size and shape
what time of year is earth at perihelion?
winter
the distance of the perihelion and the aphelion is what?
major axis
the difference between Aristotle’s model and ptolemy’s model?
ptolemy accounted for retrograde motion of planets
