Earth and Sky Trivia Quiz

Answer: chromium

Chromium is considered an impurity in aluminum oxide (corundum) and beryllium aluminosilicate (beryl). However, it gives these gemstones their attractive shades of red and green, respectively. Don't we just adore Dorothy in Chromium Beryllium Silicate City wearing her chromium aluminium oxide slippers.

Answer: Cygnus

This nebula, which many people think roughly resembles an outline of North America, is found close to the bright star Deneb in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan (a.k.a. Northern Cross). Its New General Catalog number is 7000 (NGC 7000). It is relatively large (about four times the size of the full moon) but so dim that binoculars and very dark skies are even needed to observe it as a fuzzy patch. Time exposure photographs with a UHC filter help to bring out its unique shape.

It's distance is not known with any certainty, but some astronomers estimate it is close to 1800 light years away.

Answer: Cenozoic

The Cenozoic Era began about 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era and is still ongoing. We are currently in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era. The term Cenozoic stems from the Greek root meaning "new life".

The Paleozoic era was the earliest of Earth's three geologic eras. The term "Phanerozoic" refers to the system used to classify the eras and encompasses all of them.

Answer: it's a luminous giant blue star

Discovered by the Hubble Telescope, the Pistol Star is roughly 25,000 light years from Earth near the Galactic center in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is one of the most luminous objects known in the Milky Way and is a blue hypergiant star surrounded by a nebula. It is invisible to the naked eye due to obscuring dust clouds.

Answer: banding

Gneiss (pronounced like nice)is a metamorphized variety of rock from mainly igneous origin rocks, but some gneisses are formed from sedimentary rocks. The banding prominent in gneiss occurs from the high temperatures and pressures that rocks are exposed to in their formation which change their chemical and physical structure and prevent large crystal formation and melt away any organic materials or soft minerals such as mica.

The bands consist of alternating mafic (darker) and felsic (lighter) minerals.

Answer: No

Not as of 2011. However, there is one named Karl Marx which was discovered in 1969 by Lyudmila Ivanovna Chernykh, a Russian astronomer. It is a small C-type asteroid of dark color and carbonaceous composition.

Answer: The Appalachians

The Catskills are in New York State, in the south-eastern region. The highest peak is Slide Mountain, at 4,204 feet, or 1,281 metres. A National Park was established in 1885.

Answer: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt

Twelve men have left bootprints on the moon's surface from six separate missions. From first to last: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (July 1969), Pete Conrad and Alan Bean (November 1969), Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell (February 1971), David Scott and James Irwin (July - August 1971), John Young and Charles Duke (April 1972) and Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (December 1972).

The last mission to go to the moon was Apollo 17.

Answer: aerial photography

These type of maps, also called topographic maps, are used mainly to show the terrain of an area. Most USGS maps are 7.5 minute topographic quadrangles and have a scale of 1:24,000. This means is that one inch on the map is equal to 24,000 inches (or 2000 ft) in the real world.

They can also include buildings when depicting a populated area which include schools, churches, police stations, firehouses and libraries are shown with special figures and letter codes. All these maps consist of symbolic representation (wooded areas being shaded green), so no photographs are shown.

Answer: 3.3 light years - the angle of an arc-second

A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an object which has a parallax angle of one arc-second ("par"alax + "sec"ond = parsec). This corresponds to about 3.26 light-years (i.e. about 19 trillion miles or 31 trillion kilometres).