Space History
This satellite was the first to be launched by the United States?
What is Explorer 1
This cluster of stars also known as the Seven Sisters lies within the constellation Taurus.
What is the Pleiades
This planet rotates the opposite direction of all the other planets
What is Venus
There's still time to get ready, but in 4 billion years this galaxy is destined for a head-on collision with ours.
What is the Andromeda Galaxy
Discovered in the '60s and '70s, Cygnus X1 was the first of these light-trapping gravitational bodies to be identifed.
What is a black hole
He was the first person in Space?
Who is Yuri Gagari
The largest of all the constellations, it is associated with the many-headed monster killed by Hercules in his labors.
What is Hydra
This planet discoved by William Herschel in 1781 was breifly named Geogorium Sidus.
What is Uranus?
A measure of distance between the Earth and the Sun; 149,597,970 Km.
What is an Astronomical Unit (AU)
A ring-shaped object formed by an expanding shell of gas around an aging star.
What is a planatary nebula
This Space Telescope was named after an American astronomer who confirmed that the universe is expanding?
What is the Hubble Space Telescope
These three stars form the asterism known as the Summer Triangle
What is Altair, Deneb, and Vega
The only dwarf planet located in the inner solar system, it's named for an ancient deity of planting and harvests.
What is Ceres.
This region of space surrounding the solar system, is home to most long-period comets; most of which take more than 200 years to orbit the Sun.
What is the Oort Cloud?
Viewed as a "guest star" in the year 1054 by chinese and pueblo peoples, the expanding remnant from this supernova contains a millisecond pulsar at its heart.
What is the Crab Nebula
The United States nuked this region of energetic charged particles in space surrounding the Earth in 1962
What are the Van Allen Belts
Appearing on the flags of New Zealand and Samoa, it's the smallest of the constellations.
What is the southern cross, or Crux
Ice volcanoes on this largest moon of saturn may be releasing hydrocarbons like methane rather than molton rock.
What is Titan?
The name of this region of gravitational attraction in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster
What is the Great Attractor?
These are the most luminous objects in the Universe, typically emitting thousands of times more light than the Milky Way.
What are Quasars
This Apollo mission saw the first use of the Lunar Rover.
What is Apollo 15
At the winter solstice, the sun is in Sagittarius; it once appeared in this constellation, giving a geographic feature its name.
What is Capricorn, ie the Tropic of Capricorn
Discovered in 1877, they were named for siblings of the greek god of love.
What are Phobos and Deimos?
Maffei 1 and Maffei 2 were discovered using an infared telescope in this region of space blocked by the dust of the Milky Way.
What is the Zone of Avoidance?
Arab astronomers named it in the 10th century, calling it "Al Bakr" or the "White Ox".
What is the Large Magellanic Cloud?