Overview of the Universe
How many stars are there in the Solar System?
One.
What type of EMR has the lowest frequency?
Radio waves.
How many dark lines appear in a perfectly continuous spectrum?
Zero.
What object has the brightest apparent magnitude in the sky?
The Sun.
What is the Sun's spectral type?
G2.
What is the name of our local supercluster of galaxies?
The Laniakea Supercluster.
How far does light travel in a year?
1 light year.
If the light from a star is blueshifted, in what direction is its radial velocity?
If Star A has an absolute magnitude of 5, and Star B has an absolute magnitude of 10, how much brighter/dimmer is Star A than Star B?
Star A is 100x brighter than Star B.
What is the second-hottest spectral type of star?
B-type stars.
In what two parts of the Solar System do comets come from?
The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
What visible color(s) do the paint on a blue car absorb?
All colors that aren't blue (ROYGIV).
What type of spectrum does a star have?
Absorption (Dark Line) Spectrum.
What method of measuring stellar distances relies primarily on geometry?
Triangulation/The parallax method.
Who came up with the letter-scheme we still use for spectral classification?
Annie Jump Cannon.
What is the main difference between the definition of a major planet and a dwarf planet?
The dwarf planet has not cleared its orbit of other bodies/material.
What is the name we use for a particle of light?
A photon.
Wien's Law: What can you say about the surface temperature of Star A if its peak wavelength is redder than Star B's?
Star A's temperature is cooler than B's.
Who was it that discovered that a Cepheid variable star's period was proportional to its luminosity?
Henrietta Leavitt.
What is the most important property of a star?
Its mass.
What are the most distant galaxies we can see called?
Quasars.
What do we call it when light bends as it passes through one medium to another?
Planck's Law: Between a sun-like star and a red dwarf, which one gives off more red light?
The sun-like star.
What is the parallax angle of a star if it is one parsec away?
1 arcsecond.
What color would a M8 star be?
Reddish.