Chapters 5-8 Test Review Flashcards
List the five planets that can be seen with unaided eyes:
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
The first astronomer to see Neptune
Johann Galle in Germany
Who discovered Uranus?
William Herschel
___ identified the gap in Saturn’s rings.
Cassini
Christian Huygens discovered a large moon of Saturn, later named ___.
Titan
The density of the Jovian planets is less or more than the density of earth.
less
Who gets credit for a scientific discovery?
The person who makes the discovery public gets credit for a scientific discovery
Who solved the mystery of Saturn’s rings by showing that they could not be solid, liquid, or gas, but must be many small particles independently orbiting Saturn?
James Clerk Maxwell
What is unusual about the tilt of Uranus?
Uranus is tilted almost 90 degrees, as if it were a barrel rolling around the sun.
The ___ of Saturn’s orbit causes Saturn’s rings to disappear from view when they are viewed on-edge from Earth
inclination
List the letters that make the mnemonic (memory aid) to name the planets in order from the sun. You can write the mnemonic if you prefer.
M,V,E,M,J,S,U,N (or My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos)
How does the orbital period of the planets correlate to distance from the sun?
The farther the planet is from the sun, the longer it takes to orbit the sun.
Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto using a device called a ___ comparator.
blink
What gap did the Bode-Titius series of numbers indicate?
A planet “missing” between Mars and Jupiter - the asteroid belt fills this gap.
Many meteor showers come from the remains of ___.
comets
What is the difference between a meteoroid, a meteor, and a meteorite?
A meteoroid is traveling through space. A meteor is making a fiery plunge through earth’s atmosphere (shooting star). It is called a meteorite after it has fallen to earth.
What is the name for a small, icy planet like Pluto, located beyond the orbit of Neptune?
plutoid
Asteroid means
“star-like”
In addition to magnification, another purpose of a telescope is to ___ light.
gather
Tye type of telescope that uses a glass lens to focus light is a ___.
refractor
Astronomy photographs are often printed upside-down to match ___.
the inverted image seen in the telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope has a mirror ___ in diameter.
8 feet
What new telescope design did Isaac Newton introduce?
He built a reflecting telescope, which used a mirror to reflect light to a focus.
What was one advantage of Newton’s telescope?
It was much shorter in length for the same magnification.