Planetary Science and Exoplanets
This method detects an exoplanet by measuring the periodic dimming of its host star.
What is the Transit method
This process powers main-sequence stars by converting hydrogen into helium.
What is Nuclear Fusion?
Our galaxy is a part of a wider set of moving galaxies known as the _____ ______
What is the Local Group?
This instrument collects and focuses electromagnetic radiation from astronomical objects.
What is a Telescope?
This NASA space telescope launched in 1990 and became famous for its observations of distant galaxies and nebulae.
What is the Hubble Space Telescope?
This is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface
What is the Habitable Zone
This diagram plots stellar luminosity against surface temperature or spectral type.
What is a Hertzprung-Russell Diagram
This invisible form of matter is inferred from gravitational effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters.
Dark matter
This technique separates light into its component wavelengths to reveal information about an object's composition and motion.
What is spectroscopy?
What planet was once named "Georgium Sidus"
These periodic changes in a planet's transit times can reveal the gravitational influence of another planet.
What are Transit Timing Variations
This is the approximate mass of the smallest star capable of sustaining hydrogen fusion, expressed in solar masses
What is about 0.075–0.08 solar masses?
This law relates a galaxy's recession velocity to its distance from Earth.
What is the Hubble–Lemaître law?
This technique combines observations from multiple telescopes to achieve the angular resolution of a much larger instrument.
This 2021-launched space telescope uses a large segmented primary mirror and observes primarily in infrared wavelengths. Bonus points for what special point it is orbiting around.
What is the James Webb Space Telescope, around the L2 Lagrange Point.
This orbital configuration occurs when two orbiting bodies have orbital periods in a ratio of small integers, such as 2:1 or 3:2.
What is a Mean Motion Resonance?
This stellar remnant forms when a Sun-like star exhausts its nuclear fuel and sheds its outer layers.
What is a White Dwarf
This model describes the universe's evolution using dark energy, cold dark matter, and ordinary matter.
What is the Lambda-CDM model?
This statistical method estimates model parameters by sampling their probability distributions, often using terms such as "walkers", "corners", and "traces" in the analysis.
What is a Markov-Chain-Monte-Carlo (MCMC)?
This NASA mission successfully returned samples from asteroid Bennu to Earth in 2023.
What is OSIRIS-REx?
Two rocky exoplanets receive the same amount of stellar radiation, yet one may be habitable while the other experiences extreme surface temperatures. Why might this be due to?
What is tidal locking?
In stellar evolution, this instability occurs when a sufficiently massive stellar core loses pressure support because energy is consumed by electron–positron pair production, potentially triggering explosive oxygen burning.
What is pair instability?
This cosmological phenomenon describes the suppression of matter clustering on small scales due to the large primordial velocities of a dark matter particle population, distinguishing it from cold dark matter.
What is warm dark matter?
In high-resolution spectroscopy, this technique uses telluric absorption lines or a stabilized laser frequency comb to correct instrumental wavelength drifts that would otherwise introduce systematic errors into precision radial-velocity measurements of exoplanet host stars.
What is Wavelength Calibration?
This test managed to alter the orbit of an asteroid, proving that it is possible to deflect asteroids out of "keyholes" and giving humanity a defense against Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)
What was the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)?