Stars & Light
What is the main source of light for Earth?
What is the Sun?
What is the spinning of Earth on its axis called?
What is rotation?
What phase occurs when the Moon's illuminated side is not visible from earth?
What is new moon?
What is it called when the moon moves between the sun and Earth and blocks some sunlight?
What is a solar eclipse?
What is a recognizable pattern of stars in the night sky called?
What is a constellation?
Does the moon produce its own light or reflect light from another source?
What is reflected sunlight?
How long does Earth take to complete one rotation?
What is 24 hours?
What does waxing mean when describing moon phases?
The visible illuminated portion of the moon is increasing.
What is a lunar eclipse?
When Earth is between the sun and moon and Earth's shadow falls on the moon.
What tools can astronomers use to identify constellations and their positions in the sky?
What is a star chart of star map?
Why does the sun appear much larger and brighter than the other stars in the sky?
Because the Sun is much closer to the Earth.
Why does the sun appear to rise in the east and set in the west?
Earth rotates from west to east, making the sun appear to move across the sky.
What phase comes immediately after the first quarter moon?
What is waxing gibbous?
What is the main cause of Earth's ocean tides?
The moon's gravitational pull.
Why do stars and constellations appear to move across the sky during a single night?
Earth's rotation makes them appear to move.
Explain why we can see the Moon even though it is not a star?
The moon reflects sunlight toward the Earth rather than producing its own light.
As the sun appears higher in the sky, sunlight strikes at a steeper angle, creating a shorter shadow.
The moon appears more than half illuminated, but the visible light is decreasing. Identify the phase.
What is waning gibbous?
Why don't solar eclipses happen during every new moon?
The moon's orbit is tilted, so its shadow usually misses Earth rather than lining up perfectly.
As Earth revolves around the Sun, the nighttime side faces different directions in space during the year.
A student says "All bright objects in the night sky produce their own light. Explain why this claim is incorrect using two examples.
Stars produce their own light, but the moon and planets are visible mainly because they reflect sunlight.
A student claims the sun moves closer to earth at noot because shadows become shorter. Is this claim correct? Explain using Earth's movement.
No, earth's rotation changes the Sun's apparent position and the angle of sunlight. The change in shadow length is not caused by the sun moving closer.
A student says Earth's shadow causes the moon's phases. Explain why this is incorrect and what actually causes the phases.
Moon phases occur because the moon orbits Earth and we see different amounts of its sunlit half.
Yes, around a full moon, the sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned, producing spring tides with a larger tidal range.
Two students observe the same constellation at 8 p.m. in October and 8 p.m. in January. Why might it appear in a different location or not be visible at all?
Earth has moved along its orbit, changing which part of space faces the nighttime side at the same clock time.