Solar System History
Who developed the geocentric model that used epicycles to explain retrograde motion?
Who is Ptolemy?
At which part of its orbit does a planet orbit fastest?
Where is closest to the star?
How many AU from the Sun is Earth?
What is 1?
Which planet is the brightest in our sky and often called the “morning/evening star”?
What is Venus?
Which planet has the largest mountain in the solar system? Bonus: What is its name? Bonus Bonus: How tall is it?
Mars: Olympus Mons; 3x the height of Everest.
Who proposed the heliocentric model but still used circular orbits?
Who was Copernicus?
Why doesn’t the Moon crash into Earth even though gravity pulls it downward?
What is its tangential velocity makes it continually “miss” Earth as it falls?
How many AU from the Sun is Mars?
1.4
Name two ways you can tell a planet from a star in the night sky.
What is that planets don’t twinkle and lie near the ecliptic?
Which is the hottest planet in the solar system?
What is Venus?
What observation by Galileo proved that not everything orbits Earth?
What are the four Galilean moons of Jupiter?
In Kepler’s 3rd Law, P^2 = R^3. If R = 4 AU, what is P (in years)?
What is 8 years?
How many AU from the Sun is Jupiter?
5
How much brighter is a planet of apparent magnitude -1 than apparent magnitude -2?
What is 2.5 times
Which moon is the most volcanically active object in the Solar System?
Io (Jupiter)
What was the key evidence from Venus that disproved the geocentric model?
What are the gibbous phases of Venus?
If a planet gets 4x more massive but also gets 4x farther from the star it orbits, what happens to the force of gravity it experiences?
What is 4/16 = 1/4 as much?
How many AU from the Sun is Saturn?
10
Which planet is hardest to observe with the naked eye and why?
What is Mercury because its angular separation from the Sun is always small?
The rivers and lakes on Titan aren’t made of water — they’re made of this substance.
What is methane?
What is stellar parallax, and why couldn’t ancient astronomers observe it?
What is the apparent shift in nearby stars too small to see without telescopes?
Planet A orbits twice as far from the Sun as Planet B.
According to Kepler’s 3rd Law, how many times longer does Planet A take to complete one orbit compared to Planet B?
What is about 2.8 (3) times longer?
If the Sun were the size of a basketball (about 24 cm across), how big would the Earth and Jupiter be on that same scale?
What are:
Earth ≈ 2 mm (about the size of a peppercorn)
Jupiter ≈ 2.4 cm (about the size of a grape or small marble)
How much brighter is a planet of apparent magnitude 1 than apparent magnitude -2?
(2.5)^3 = (2.5) x (2.5) x (2.5) = 15.625
Which moons of which planets in the solar system are believed to have subsurface oceans of water?
What are Europa (Jupiter) and Enceladus (Titan)?