Exploring The Sky

Question 1

What type of motion would you call the sun going from east to west each day?

Answer 1

diurnal motion, due to the earth’s rotation

Question 2

Define Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation

Answer 2

every object in the Universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line joining the centres of the two objects that is proportional to the products of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two objects

Question 3

Why do stars twinkle

Answer 3

Due to irregularities in our atmosphere

Question 4

What does the Milky Way appear to look like from earth?

Answer 4

Diffuse band of light across the Sky (easy to see when not much light pollution)

Question 5

What can be in a nebulae?

Answer 5

Stellar remnant (e.g. Crab nebula)
Hot gas clouds (e.g. Orion nebula)
Another galaxy (e.g. Andromeda)

Question 6

What was the first observed asteroid and when?

Answer 6

Ceres 1801

Question 7

What are comets and what is their orbital path?

Answer 7

Icy, small Solar System bodies that, which warm passing close to the Sun, beginning to release gases (atmosphere - coma, tail)

highly eccentric elliptical orbits (occasional visitors), a wide range of orbital periods

Question 8

What are meteors?

Answer 8

Shooting stars

Question 9

What is an aurorae?

Answer 9

Glow from particles in high atmosphere stimulated by collisions with charged particles from outer Space

Question 10

What is zodiacal light?

Answer 10

Faint glow faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust

Visible along zodiac near Sun

Best seen near the equator, where twilight is short