Past Paper

Question 1

What is the AU a measure of?

Answer 1

The average distance between Earth and the Sun

Question 2

In the small angle formula tan 𝜃 (where 𝜃 is the angle separation in the sky of
two objects or the angular width of an object) is approximated to?

Answer 2

The ratio between the width of an object and its distance

Question 3

What co-ordinates are used to locate a celestial object in the sky?

Answer 3

Right Ascension and Declination

Question 4

What is the Pole star?

Question 5

The ecliptic is?

Answer 5

The apparent path of the sun with the background of the stars

Question 6

The copernican model lacked simplicity that?

Question 7

The Sun appears to move relative to the stars. Copernicus’s model accounts for
this as being due to?

Question 8

Why did the phenomenon of stellar parallax not convince people of Copernicus’s
time that his model was better than the geocentric model?

Answer 8

Stellar parallax had not yet been observed

Question 9

In Ptolemy’s model of the Universe?

Answer 9

the Sun, Moon and 5 planets went round in circular orbits whose centres
moved round the Earth in circles

Question 10

Which of the planets have a period of revolution around the Sun of less than 1
year?

Answer 10

Mercury and Venus

Question 11

Astronomy is science because scientists?

Answer 11

make predictions about the cosmos based on models constructed from
observations

Question 12

The four seasons—spring, summer, fall, winter—are caused primarily by?

Answer 12

the tilt of the Earth’s equatorial plane with respect to its orbit.

Question 13

What features of Copernicus’ model reveals his hesitation in breaking with the conventional way of thinking?

Answer 13

he continued to use circles as planetary paths

Question 14

From the law of equal areas (Kepler’s 3rd law), one can predict that the Earth:

Answer 14

spins faster when it is closer to the Sun.

Question 15

Which observation made by Galileo demonstrated that the Ptolemaic model of
planetary motion was not correct?

Answer 15

the complete set of phases of Venus

Question 16

The radius of the Earth was measured by Eratosthenes around 200 BC by?

Answer 16

noting the different altitude of the Sun at midday in Alexandria and at Syene,
two cities on the same meridian whose distance apart he knew.

Question 17

The favoured explanation of the origin of the Moon is?

Answer 17

The large impact theory: the Moon was formed from material thrown out by the
impact on Earth of a Mars-sized body

Question 18

A lunar eclipse occurs only at _____ Moon and a solar eclipse at _____ Moon?

Answer 18

full . . . new

Question 19

Which of the following can be considered to be directly caused by tidal
interactions?

Answer 19

It has made one side of the Moon to always face the Earth

Question 20

What true about craters on Mercury compared to the moon?

Answer 20

Mercury craters are shallower than the ones found at the Moon due to its larger
gravitational field

Question 21

The point about which two bodies orbit each other under their mutual
gravitational attraction is known as the?

Answer 21

centre of mass

Question 22

Stellar Parallax is defined as?

Answer 22

the apparent shifting of nearby stars with respect to distant ones as the position
of the observer changes

Question 23

hat is not true about solar and lunar eclipses

Answer 23

Eclipses happen periodically, once every year

Question 24

Craters on the Moon are generally circular because?

Answer 24

they were produced by subsurface explosions of material vaporised by
colliding bodies

Question 25

The absolute magnitude of a star is measured by

Answer 25

its apparent magnitude if it were at a distance of 10 pc

Question 26

The stars of binary star systems:

Answer 26

revolve around their centre of mass

Question 27

Knowledge of which of the following allows us to calculate the mass of a binary system?

Answer 27

The distance between the stars and their period of revolution

Question 28

The primary method by which energy is transported from the centre of the Sun to its surface is

Answer 28

convection

Question 29

The two forces producing hydrostatic equilibrium in the Sun that determines its size are

Answer 29

gravity and gas pressure

Question 30

Einstein’s equation E=mc 2 explains?

Answer 30

relates mass with energy, and is responsible for the explanation of how stars keep emitting copious energy for many millions of years

Question 31

The standard model of the Sun

Answer 31

is a theoretical model of the Sun and its internal processes that describes the variation of temperature and pressure from the surface to the centre

Question 32

Sunspots are

Answer 32

areas of the photosphere that are comparatively cooler and slightly depressed

Question 33

The solar wind is

Answer 33

a fast moving plasma emitted by the Sun that reaches all the planets

Question 34

Valles Marineris is a

Answer 34

large canyon on Mars

Question 35

What is true of all of the planets

Answer 35

they rotate on their axes and revolve around the Sun

Question 36

The factors which determine whether a planet or moon will retain an atmosphere are its chemical composition, temperature, and ______.

Answer 36

Escape velocity

Question 37

What does the planet Mercury look like?

Answer 37

The moon

Question 38

Which model predicted that Venus would exhibit all phases (like the Moon does)?

Answer 38

The heliocentric model

Question 39

The greenhouse effect keeps Venus hot because?

Answer 39

The atmosphere is rich in carbon dioxide

Question 40

The Roche limit refers to the

Answer 40

minimum distance between a planet and a large satellite (a Moon)

Question 41

Concerning the question of whether water used to exist on Mars

Answer 41

the presence of water derived surface features such as dried up valleys puts the matter beyond doubt

Question 42

Planets and moons that have magnetic fields have in common that they

Answer 42

only have a molten core

Question 43

In ascending order, the layers of our atmosphere are

Answer 43

the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, the exosphere

Question 44

What is not a green house gas?

Answer 44

Argon

Question 45

What is the reaction that forms ozone?

Answer 45

O2+O+mol>O3+mol

Question 46

What are three things that ozone does?

Answer 46

-Protects us from the UVB radiation - Ozone heating, among other things, helps create the temperature inversion that maintains the consistency of our lower atmosphere - Ozone gives the sky at twilight its pale blue shading

Question 47

George Aubourne Clark

Answer 47

created the first standard reference images for cloud identification

Question 48

what does the acronym IPCC stand?

Answer 48

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Question 49

What is albedo?

Answer 49

A measure of solar reflection

Question 50

What is documentary climatology?

Answer 50

Sophisticated computer modelling of oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns to study changes wrought by the climate

Question 51

In which region of the electromagnetic spectrum does the Earth emit the majority of its radiation

Answer 51

The far IR region of the spectrum

Question 52

why is ice a good material for constructing igloos?

Answer 52

Ice is a good reflector of radiation.

Question 53

What is radiative forcing

Answer 53

The energy requirement needed to maintain a sustained higher temperature, expressed in Wm -2

Question 54

Without the atmospheric greenhouse effect, the Earth would be

Answer 54

significantly cooler

Question 55

Sea-level isotherms are

Answer 55

a set of lines of constant temperature for which observations have been corrected for the height at which they were made.

Question 56

Changes in temperature over the course of the year tend to follow the annual changes in solar radiation received by about

Answer 56

A month

Question 57

Why does Aberdeen receive less solar radiation than the equator at ground level

Answer 57

The more oblique angle of the Sun and the longer atmospheric path light must take to reach the surface at Aberdeen’s higher latitude means more solar energy is absorbed before it reaches the earth’s surface

Question 58

What instruments would you use to measure wind speed?

Answer 58

A Robinson’s cup anemomete

Question 59

What is saturation vapour pressure

Answer 59

The vapour pressure where the rates of spontaneous condensation and evaporation match

Question 60

IR radiation emitted by clouds and the atmosphere?

Answer 60

keeps the Earth cooler than it would otherwise be