Astronomers
A German-Canadian physicist who served as Chancellor of Carleton University, his building is now home to Carleton's Observatory.
Gerhard Herzberg
The region around a star which has a temperature just right for water to be present in liquid state.
The Goldilocks Zone
The first Canadian in space.
Marc Garneau
Phobos and Deimos are moons of this planet.
Mars
In the original Star Wars movie, Luke gazes at a "twin sunset". The astronomical term for this type of star system is a ________.
Binary star system
A Danish astronomer with a metal nose, he is best known for dedicating decades of his life in the 16th century to recording astronomical observations.
Tycho Brahe
The massive, explosive event that marks the death of very massive stars.
Supernova
The first woman to travel to space.
Valentina Tereshkova
The term used for a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun.
Exoplanet
Often referred to as a "fake force", this effect simulates gravity by spinning a ring-shaped space station, as seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Centrifugal force (also accepted: "Centripetal force")
Responsible for developing the on-board flight software for the Apollo Program, she also invented the term "software engineering".
Margaret Hamilton
The gravitational phenomena that distorts the light from distant objects around nearer, more massive ones, magnifying and bending the appearance of the distant objects.
Gravitational lensing
Canada's first satellite.
Alouette 1
The largest moon in the solar system
Ganymede
In Contact (1977), the protagonist is a scientist working with the SETI program at this observatory in Puerto Rico.
Arecibo
Published an astronomical catalogue consisting of 110 nebulae and star clusters in the 1700s.
Charles Messier
A theoretical spherical shell made of icy, comet-like objects said to surround the outer reaches of the solar system beyond the Kuiper Belt.
Oort Cloud
This satellite mission crashed into the surface of Mars due to a mismatch in units used for two different software systems - one was in metric, the other in imperial!
Mars Climate Orbiter
The period of Halley's Comet (how often it reappears).
76 Earth years (acceptable: +/- five years)
Prominently featured in Interstellar, this relativistic effect causes time to appear to move slower in a strong gravitational field.
Time dilation
Famously derived an equation to calculate the chances of advanced alien civilizations in the universe, as a thought experiment.
Francis Drake.
Nimish is known for being practical, determined, and diligent. What star sign is he?
Capricorn
The Soviet spacecraft that carried Yuri Gagarin into orbit for the first time.
Vostok 3KA (accepted: "Vostok")
The celestial body orbited by Nix.
Pluto
A speculative real-world implementation of the "warp drive" from Star Trek, achieving FTL travel by contracting space in front and expanding space behind.
Alcubierre Drive