General Astronomy Trivia

1. What is the stellar classification of our sun?

From Quiz Our Great Space

Answer: Yellow dwarf

Stars are classified using their color, temperature, and size. Our sun is a yellow dwarf. It will become a red giant and then a white dwarf near the of its life.

From Quiz A Journey Through the Southern Night Sky

Answer: Inverted

The constellations do not change, it is only the viewer's orientation that changes due to the fact that the Earth is a sphere. Of course you could always lie on your back with your head pointing north to get a northern hemisphere viewpoint.

From Quiz Night's Sky and Planets

Answer: Red Hypergiant

VY Canis Majoris is so big that in a comparison to the Sun part of the picture had to be enlarged and even then it was hard to see it. A hypergiant is normally red but rare yellow and blue ones have also been found.

From Quiz Space Tour

Answer: -26.8

Apparent magnitude is the measure of the luminosity of a celestial object when seen from Earth. The sun is the closest star to Earth and has an apparent magnitude of -26.8.

From Quiz It's not Kevin Spacey

Answer: She died from overheating before her oxygen ran out while still in space.

The Soviets never intended to retrieve Laika's capsule, which created a controversy outside the Soviet Union. At first it was believed that Laika simply perished from oxygen deprivation, but in 1998 it was reported that she died when the cabin overheated on the fourth day. In 2002 a Russian scientist reported that in 1957 it was "practically impossible to create a reliable temperature control system" for the cabin before the launch took place. In 1958 Laika's body and Sputnik 2 disintegrated on re-entry. In 2008 a statue and plaque were set up in Laika's memory at the Russian space training base.

From Quiz Evy's Eyes on the Sky

Answer: Hawaii

The Gemini North telescope is one of several large telescopes located at the Keck Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea, an extinct volcano in Hawaii. The summit is 14,000 feet (over 4,000 meters) tall. The thinness of the atmosphere with its attendant lack of water vapor makes for excellent viewing conditions, but care must be taken by the scientists and technicians there as each breath takes in only 39% of the normal amount of oxygen. Nobody actually sleeps at the summit, and at the end of a night's observing, the astronomers drive down to the "halfway house" called Hale Pohaku, where the air is much denser.

From Quiz Starry, Starry Night

Answer: SN1572

Tycho's Supernova, otherwise known as "SN1572", appeared on 11 November 1572 while he was at Herrevad Abbey. Having studied astronomy since a young child, he observed that this star was in the constellation Cassiopeia and was unusual and brighter than anything he had ever seen. He was not the first to sight this star, which according to some sources, was first seen by W. Schuler on 6 November 1572.

From Quiz A in Astronomy

Answer: aberration

This was one of the reasons Isaac Newton invented the reflecting telescope, which uses a mirror instead of lenses.

From Quiz General Astronomy Facts

Answer: Eagle Nebula

Discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-1746, the Eagle Nebula is a young open cluster of stars resembling an eagle.

From Quiz Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Gas Giant

Answer: hydrogen and helium

Gas Giants are often called Jovian planets, named after Jupiter, a classic example of a gas giant, although there is a lot of variety among this class of planets.

From Quiz A Truly Universal Quiz!

Answer: Vega

American astronomer Henry Draper photographed Vega's spectrum in 1872. The images he took of Vega and other stars would lay the foundations for his "Henry Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra".

From Quiz Tour of the Northern Sky

Answer: The area of the sky north of the celestial equator

The celestial equator divides the sky into two hemispheres, north and south, just like the equator on Earth that divides our planet into the northern and southern hemispheres.

From Quiz A Quizzer's Guide to the Galaxy

Answer: The Milky Way

The name "Milky Way" comes from the Latin "Via Lactea". Many cultures have legends about the origin of the bright band in the sky which is what we see as we look at our own galaxy from the inside, and many of them have to do with milk! The best known is the legend of how Zeus gave the infant Heracles to suckle at the breast of his wife, the goddess Hera, while she was sleeping. She woke, realised the boy wasn't hers and pushed him away. The spilled milk became the Milky Way.

From Quiz Test Your Astronomical Knowledge

Answer: They are called after famous women or given female names.

Exceptions to the female names for features on Venus are "Alpha Regio", "Beta Regio" and "Maxwell Montes", which were named prior to the International Astronomical Union's adoption of the current system.

From Quiz The Space Panorama

Answer: Garnet Star

Mu Cephei is large enough that if placed at the sun's position, it would engulf all planets up to Saturn!

From Quiz The Elements of Astronomy

Answer: Helium

Each element is known to have a signature light spectrum. When astronomers looked at the light spectrum of the Sun, they found a new set of spectral lines that they had never seen before. Helium had not been discovered on Earth yet because it was very unreactive. So, when they found this new element in the Sun, they used the Greek word "helius" which translates to "sun" to name it.

From Quiz The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

Answer: Theory of Relativity

The theory of relativity established Einstein as one of the greatest minds that ever lived.

From Quiz Astronomy Potpourri

Answer: Jupiter

Due to its huge size and gravitation, Jupiter has sucked up countless errant asteroids which, had they impacted with our relatively tiny planet, could easily have extinguished life on Earth on a number of occasions. Kind of gives you a newfound appreciation for far off gas giants, doesn't it?

From Quiz The Solar System, and Beyond!

Answer: 1977

The American astronomer Lyman Spitzer first proposed an extraterrestrial observatory in 1946. The Hubble Space Telescope was named after Edwin Hubble.

From Quiz Astro, Go!

Answer: Triton

There are other small moons which revolve clockwise around other planets. Ananke, Carne, Pasiphae and Sinope revolve clockwise round Jupiter. Phoebe revolves round Saturn the same way. All other moons revolve in an anti-clockwise direction.

From Quiz Basic Astronomy

Answer: yellow dwarf

The Sun is known as a class G main sequence star (also known as a yellow dwarf). Yellow dwarves only make up around 7.5 percent of the stars in the universe. By contrast, class M stars, which include red dwarves and red giants make up around 75 percent of stars in the universe. The Sun will eventually become a red giant, but not for about five billion years.

From Quiz Practical Astronomy

Answer: Vesta

Although it's not the largest (Ceres is) it's the only one that can be seen without a telescope - but only just, if you have a dark sky.

From Quiz Astronomical Terms

Answer: Meteor

A meteroid is the object before it encounters the Earth's atmosphere. A meteorite is the object that survives the journey through the atmosphere to impact on the Earth. Asteroids are objects made of rock and iron and most are in the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

From Quiz Cosmic Impacts in Fact and Fiction

Answer: 1908

On June 30, 1908, a large fireball, origin unknown, exploded above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia. The explosion flattened hundreds of square miles of forest and was heard over 400 miles away.

From Quiz Exploring the Universe

Answer: Nicolaus Copernicus

"On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres," the English name of the work, was written by Nicolaus Copernicus probably around 1514 but it wasn't published until after his death since it was banned by the Church. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Polish astronomer and mathematician whose ground breaking work transformed our understanding of the cosmos. His most significant achievement was the development of the heliocentric model, which proposed that the Sun, rather than the Earth, is at the center of the universe. This theory, outlined in this seminal work challenged the long-held Ptolemaic model, which placed the Earth at the center and inspired later scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton to further explore and confirm the structure of the solar system. Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer and alchemist of the Renaissance.

From Quiz Galaxies Far Far Away

Answer: 20

Scientists must use special telescopes to look past to more galaxies.

From Quiz Just About Space Stuff

Answer: 60 pounds

This is because the gravitational pull on the surface of the moon is about one sixth as strong as it is on Earth.

From Quiz Bright Moon and Bright Stars

Answer: Callisto

Ganymede is 3,275 miles in diameter. Io is 2,262 miles in diameter. Europa is 1,950 miles in diameter. Ganymede is the largest satellite in our solar system, at 3,275 miles in diameter.

From Quiz Planets, Stars and Beyond

Answer: a stellar wind

From Quiz Space IQ

Answer: The First Iridium Telecommunications Satellite

The first Iridium telecommunications satellite reentered the Earth's atmosphere on November 29th 2000, and broke up over the Atlantic Ocean. The satellite was non-operational and not designed to survive reentry, so bringing it down posed little or no threat. The Iridium satellites have been the source of much financial strife and technical problems since 1998.

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