What's Out There?
This is the name of our galaxy
The Milky Way
The number of planets in our solar system
Eight
The closest star to Earth
The Sun
The distance that light travels in one year
A light-year
The scientific theory that explains how the universe began
The Big Bang theory
A large cloud of gas and dust in space where stars are born
A nebula
The star at the centre of our solar system
The Sun
The main fuel that stars burn during most of their life
Hydrogen (fused into helium)
Approximately how long it takes light from the Sun to reach Earth: 8 seconds, 8 minutes, or 8 hours?
About 8 minutes
The approximate age of the universe: 1.38 million, 13.8 billion, or 138 trillion years?
Approximately 13.8 billion years
A region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape
A black hole
The four planets closest to the Sun are called the rocky (or terrestrial) planets. Name all four
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars
What a medium-sized star like our Sun will eventually become at the end of its life
A white dwarf
The unit used to measure the distance between the Earth and the Sun
An astronomical unit (AU)
True or false: The universe is still expanding today
True
True or false: Our solar system is located near the centre of the Milky Way galaxy
False — it is located in one of the outer spiral arms
The force that keeps planets in orbit around the Sun
Gravity
The stage a large star goes through before it explodes
Red supergiant
This unit of distance, equal to about 3.26 light-years, is commonly used by astronomers for very large distances
A parsec
When an ambulance drives away from you, its siren sounds lower in pitch. This effect, which also applies to light from distant galaxies, is called this.
The Doppler effect
This mysterious substance makes up most of the matter in the universe, but it cannot be directly seen or detected with telescopes
Dark Matter
A planet that orbits a star outside our solar system
An exoplanet
The violent explosion that occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its life, briefly outshining an entire galaxy
A supernova
The nearest star system to our Sun is Alpha Centauri. It is approximately this many light-years away: 0.4, 4.4, or 44?
Approximately 4.4 light-years
The faint radiation left over from the early universe, detected in every direction of space, that is key evidence for the Big Bang
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation