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24 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
- 3rd side (hint)
True or False: Most of the names of the brightest stars are of Arabic origin.
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True; Most of the names of the brightest stars are of Arabic origin. Go back and reread the section on the Dark Ages.
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Aphelion is the point in a planetary orbit at which the planet is...?
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Farthest from the sun.
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What was the greatest contribution of Tycho Brahe to astronomy?
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He amassed a large number of precise measurements of stellar and planetary positions in the sky.
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Refer to the figure. Suppose Mercury takes twenty–one days to move from position P to position Q, and eighteen days to move from position R to position S. What do you know about the areas A and B?
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A is bigger than B
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What is position 1 called?
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Inferior conjunction
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True or False: When Saturn is at opposition we cannot see it because it is hiding behind the Sun.
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False; Opposition means the planet and the Sun are on opposite sides of Earth. Thus, we could see Saturn high in the sky at midnight, when it is at opposition.
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Nicholas Copernicus was the first modern astronomer to believe in....?
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A heliocentric universe.
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Johannes Kepler theorized that...?
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That planets do not move at uniform speeds throughout their orbits
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Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to...?
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Use a telescope.
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Tycho Brahe tried to...?
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Prove heliocentric universe was wrong.
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Eratosthenes calculated...?
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The circumference of the Earth.
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Aristotle created the theory of...?
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The universe with two types of motion: towards away from and around.
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Ptolemy invented...?
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Epicycles to explain retrograde motion.
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Aristarchus believed...?
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That the Sun was at the center of the universe.
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Which of the following is not one of the major astronomical discoveries made by Galileo?
A.Jupiter is orbited by moons. B. The shape of a planet's orbit is an ellipse. C. The Moon has mountains, valleys, and craters. D. Venus goes through phases. E. The Sun has spots and rotates. |
B. The shape of a planet's orbit is an ellipse.
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True or False: Planets do not orbit the Sun in perfectly circular orbits.
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True; As Kepler pointed out, planetary orbits are actually ellipses, not circles.
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True or False: The synodic period is the amount of time for a planet to move from one configuration to the next identical configuration.
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True; Recall that the synodic period is based on Earth–bound observation, and the sidereal period is based on an outside perspective.
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True or False: All early astronomers before Copernicus believed that the world was flat.
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False; Recall that ancient Greek astronomers, such as Aristotle and Eratosthenes, believed the earth was a sphere.
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True or False: Epicycles are smaller spheres attached to the larger deferents.
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True; Ptolemy invented epicycles to explain retrograde motion. Epicycles are smaller spheres attached to the larger deferents.
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What is this constellation?
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Canis Major.
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Who proposed the idea that gravity could actually bend light?
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Albert Einstein
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True or False: People of ancient Greece believed the world was shaped like a sphere.
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True; Aristotle concluded that Earth must be a sphere. Eratosthenes measured the circumference of Earth.
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What is the bright star shown in this constellation?
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Sirius.
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(Constellation: Canis Major) |
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True or False: Planets in orbits closer to the Sun move faster than planets in orbits further away.
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True; Remember Kepler's Second Law: the area swept out by a planet will be equal for equal times. One result of this is that the closer planets are to the Sun, the faster they move in their orbits.
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