Stellarum
Solis
Planetarum
Astronomers
Potpourri
100

The brightest stars have magnitudes that are (positive or negative?)

What is negative?

100

A type of planetary model with the Sun as the center.

What is heliocentric?

100

These planets were important to early astronomers because they are visible to the naked eye.

What are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn?

100

Astronomer who built giant instruments for celestial measurements at his Danish observatory.

Who is Tycho Brahe?

100

The latitude of Green Bay, WI, in degrees North.

What is 44.5?

200

Merak and Dubhe, the Pointer Stars, point to this.

What is Polaris / North Star / Pole Star?

200

The apparent path of the Sun among the stars throughout the year.

What is the Ecliptic?

200

The direction of apparent motion of planets in the southern sky against the backdrop of the stars.

What is eastward?

200

The first well-known astronomer to propose and defend a heliocentric model of the universe.

Who is Aristarcus?

200

A light year is used to measure this.

What is distance?

300

The direction an observer is facing when the stars' apparent motion is from bottom left towards top right.

What is east?

300

Name of the average time span from one noon (when the sun is in its meridian) to the next.

What is solar day?

300

Type of motion when a planet appears to drift westward.

What is retrograde?

300

Johannes Kepler discovered that the shape of planetary orbits is this.

What is eliptical?

300

Plato believed this was uniform in terms of the movement of all celestial bodies.

What is speed?

400

The pole star during Plato's time (approx. 400 B.C.)

What is Kochab?

400

Term that defines the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun.

What is Astronomical Unit?

400

What Tycho Brahe believed the planets revolved around.

What is the Sun?

400

Scientist who initially suggested a heliocentric model of the universe using Platonic Solids to explain planetary positions.

Who is Johannes Kepler?

400

Stages of the Moon during which the Moon is moving towards full.

What is waxing?

500

How many minutes shorter a sidereal day is than a solar day.

What is 4?

500

Term used to explain when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are in a straight line (with Earth in the middle).

What is opposition?

500

Planets travel within this belt on the celestial sphere.

What is the zodiac?

500

The three tools Ptolemy used to explain retrograde motion.

What are the eccentric, the epicycle, and the equant?

500

Protestant reformers argued against the Copernican System based on this.

What is Sola Scriptura (Scripture Only)?

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