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Space Travel
Basic Astronomy Quiz
Here is a very basic astronomy quiz. If you really want to test your knowledge, don't scroll down to the answers until you have completed the quiz.
1. One asteroid is visible to the naked eye. Which is it?
A. Vesta
B. Pallas
C. Ceres
D. Eros
2. Sirius is a binary star and the brightest star in the sky. True or False?
3. You can see some of the moons of Jupiter with ordinary binoculars. True or False?
4. When a meteor show is named after a constellation (the Geminids after Gemini, for example), it means that all meteors you see will be contained within the bounds of that constellation. True or False?
5. The name of the most active meteor shower that happens in August every year is:
A. Augustids
B. Perseids
C. Leonids
D. Meteorids
Quiz answers:
1. Vesta is the correct answer (B). Vesta is not the largest (Ceres is), but it's the only one that can be seen without a telescope. The sky has to be very dark.
2. True. Sirius B is sometimes called the Pup. It is a white dwarf companion to Sirius. The two stars revolve around a common center of gravity every 50 years.
3. True. Lo, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (the four brightest moons) can be seen through binoculars.
4. False. The name of the meteor show only means that the point from which all meteors appear to radiate is from within the constellation for which it is named.
5. Perseids (B). The Perseids are one of the best meteor showers of the year. The peak is about the 12th or 13th of August every year.
How did you do? If you answered four correctly, you beat the average. If you didn't do that well, you need to brush up on the basics.
See Also:
Nicolaus Copernicus, Treaty of Westminster & Carson McCullers
Deep Sky Objects
Galaxies
First, a bit of information: A light year is the distance that light travels in one year (roughly six trillion miles). The nearest star to our sun is four light years away.
There are four kinds of galaxies: spiral, lenticular, elliptical, and irregular. We live in a spiral galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy. There are dwarf galaxies that are actually satellites of the Milky Way that are a few hundred light years away. The Milky Way's nearest neighbor, however, is another spiral galaxy called the Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2 to 3 MILLION light years away.
Each type of galaxy has its own properties:
1. Our galaxy is a spiral galaxy. A spiral galaxy is made up of two basic components; a large flat disc shape that contains a lot of interstellar matter, and young open star clusters. Our sun is one of several hundred billion stars in the spiral Milky Way Galaxy.
2. A lenticular galaxy is a short version of the spiral galaxy in which stellar formation has ceased.
3. An elliptical galaxy is shaped more or less like a football. They have little or no angular momentum and contain little or no interstellar matter.
4. An irregular galaxy is exactly what it sounds like it would be. It is an irregular shape and it doesn't fit well within the scheme of disks and ellipsoids.
Galaxies of all shapes and sizes do have some basic common features. A galaxy contains hundreds or billions of stars like our sun. Most of the time, stars are not loners like our sun. They usually occur in pairs or binaries. Other features that galaxies have in common are:
* Globular star clusters
* Planetary nebulae or supernova remnants
* Clusters and associations
* Super massive dark objects or black holes |
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History of Astronomy
Astronomy is the oldest of all sciences. It has its roots back in the beginning of time. There is evidence of astronomy playing a large role in religious, mythological, and astrological practices of pre-history. Mankind has always looked to the heavens with wonder mixed with a healthy dose of curiosity.
In the earliest cultures, heavenly bodies were identified as gods or spirits, and these gods and spirits were thought to control such things as rain, drought, seasons, and the tides. The first astronomers are believed to have been priests or Magi. The earliest calendars were based upon the phases of the moon and the time between phases.
Western astronomy has its roots in ancient Mesopotamia astrology. The modern practice of dividing a circle into 360 degrees, of 60 minutes each, began in ancient Mesopotamia with the Sumerians.
The oldest astronomical writing that we have is Tablet 63 of the Enuma Anu Enlil. It is called the Venus tablet of Ammi-saduqa. The Venus tablet lists the first and last visible risings of Venus over a period of about 21 years, and it is the earliest conclusive evidence that the phenomena of a planet were recognized.
Since the beginning of time, man has looked up. The sky, particularly the night sky, has been full of mystery that humankind wanted to understand.
The old civilizations of China, India, Greece, and Rome all looked to the stars for explanations to earthly situations and problems, inspiration and guidance. They found all of those things, but they also found knowledge, and over the centuries our knowledge of astronomy has grown. But there are those who believe that we have only just begun to learn all the heavens have to teach us.
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