Consider the Heavens
Which planet travels most rapidly through its orbit?
Mercury
What type of time is based on the stars?
sidereal time
At the end of the sandy, underwater plain that borders the land, a sharp drop-off marks the beginning of the.....
continental slope
The phase in which the moon has a bulging shape and is growing larger is called
waxing gibbous
The speed at which a spacecraft must be traveling to leave Earth’s gravity without using its rockets anymore is called....
escape velocity
What is a trail of space debris left by a comet?
meteoroid stream
How is the lunar month of 29 ½ days defined?
time the moon takes to go through all of its phases
The steady change in atmospheric temperature with altitude is the atmosphere’s temperature.....
gradient
What are the moons that help keep a planet’s ring in place called?
shepherd moons
What was the first space station launched by the United States?
Skylab
What evidence indicates that the sun is spinning?
movement of sunspots
What calendar uses the lunar year with an extra month in certain years to stay in step with the seasons?
Jewish
Small and powdery snowflakes that do not stick to objects form snow.
What type of partial eclipse occurs when the moon is too small to cover the sun entirely, leaving a ring of light around the moon?
annular solar eclipse
What visible-light telescope was launched into space, enabling seeing without atmospheric distortion?
Hubble Space Telescope
The only planet to be discovered mathematically before it was seen is....
Neptune
A telescope that uses a large, curved mirror as the objective is a....
reflecting telescope
A tornado that forms over water is called a....
waterspout
What is the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere called?
corona
What was the first mission to land a man on the moon?
Apollo 11
Aristotle taught a view of the universe.
geocentric
The first type of spacecraft designed to be reused was the.....
space shuttle
A weather instrument that simultaneously measures and transmits meteorological data from weather balloons to weather stations is a......
radiosonde
The planets closer to the sun are the planets.
inner
The sun’s northernmost and southernmost points on the ecliptic are called.....
solstices