ASTRONOMY 5 MIDTERM
EXAM PART I FALL 2009
60 QUESTIONS – 50 POINTS: Part I of the midterm
constitutes the “Take-Home” portion of the entire midterm exam. Additionally,
this “Take-Home” portion is divided into two parts.
The first portion can be found in your MasteringAstronomy account and is
labeled “Midterm – Online Portion”. The questions asked there are directed at
the first chapter listed in your reading assignment for Week 9 of the course
(see your General Schedule of Activities
document) and is conducted in the same manner as done with your weekly homework
exercises where each question is worth 0.5 point. Therefore, this portion of
the midterm has 20 questions for a total possible of 10 points.
The second portion of the “Ta
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Part II of the Midterm
(worth 50 points) will be given in the wee
1. See FIGURE ‘A’. What is the name of this telescope?
2. See FIGURE ‘B’. In the Renaissance times, he proposed this model of the solar system (name this person).
3. See FIGURE ‘C’. What type of spectra is depicted in the FIGURE?
4. See FIGURE ‘D’. This person in the FIGURE discovered moons around which planet (name the planet)?
5. See FIGURE ‘E’. Which solar system model, the heliocentric or the geocentric, did the person in the FIGURE not support?
6. See FIGURE ‘F’. If an astronaut’s mass at the surface of the Earth is 60 kg, what would her mass be on the surface of the object pictured in the FIGURE?
7. See FIGURE ‘G’. In this standard H-R diagram, 4 regions have been highlighted as likely regions where stars may be plotted. In which region (1, 2, 3, 4) will most of the stars fall?
8. In FIGURE ‘G’ again, which region(s) could reasonably contain M type stars?
9. See FIGURE ‘H’: What type of spectrum would this object (when heated up) emit?
10. See FIGURE ‘I’. What is the planetary configuration of the planet Mars?
11.
See FIGURE ‘J’. In the FIGURE the planet goes
around in a countercloc
12. See FIGURE ‘K’ What is the magnification power of this telescope?
13. What is the light gathering power of this telescope (FIGURE ‘K’) compared to the human eye (diameter of eye lens = 5 mm)?
14. Suppose you are riding in your car and approaching a red light. How fast would need to go in order to make the red light (lrest = 650 nm) appear to turn into a green light (lshift = 510 nm)? Give your answer in terms of km/sec.
15.
An observer in
16. Which of the following parts of the Sun has the lowest temperature: the photosphere, the chromosphere or the corona?
17. Due to the precession of the Earth, in which constellation will the Vernal Equinox occupy next?
18. What constellation will the Full Moon occupy in April?
19.
Which star map (SC001 or SC002) contains stars
never seen in
20.
Suppose you have a nic
21. The average distance from the Sun of a newly discovered celestial body is 64 AU. How long does it take to go around the Sun (in years)?
22.
For an observer in
23. Which constellation could Mercury or Jupiter never appear in: Pisces, Cygnus, Leo, or Gemini?
For the following five questions, match the descriptions on the left to the people on the right (put the letter corresponding to the person on the answer sheet; letters are not repeated):
24. First
to use ellipses as orbits a) Aristotle
25. Ancient
Greek who believed in a heliocentric universe b) Tycho
26. First
to measure the size of the Earth to good accuracy c) Galileo
27. Invented
the first reflecting telescope d) Aristarchus
28. Discovered
the phases of Venus using a telescope e) Erastosthenes
f) Nicolaus Copernicus
g) Ptolemy
h) Johannes Kepler
i) Isaac Newton
Answer the following three questions (29-31)
using the atomic energy diagram below:
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29. Which transition(s)
(A,B,C,D,E,F,G) require an emission of a photon?
30. Which transition releases
the greatest amount of energy?
31. Which transition absorbs the longest wavelength photon?
32.
An object is observed from Earth to have its spectral
lines red-shifted. Is the object moving away from Earth or towards the Earth?
33.
When Jupiter is farthest from the Earth this year, is
it nearly in what planetary alignment?
34.
Are the
largest telescopes used by astronomers refractors or reflectors?
35.
What is the
second most common element in a typical star?
36.
Suppose star A
and star B are identical in stellar properties but lie at different distances
from the Earth. If the brightness of star A is 5 magnitudes brighter that star
B, how much further away is star B as compared to star A?
37.
Which star is
the brightest that could be seen in the night sky (from Rocklin)?
38.
If the Sun
were 10 parsecs from the Earth, would it be visible, without the use of a
telescope, in a dark, nighttime sky?
39.
If the net
force upon on object is 20
40.
If photon A has
twice the energy as photon B, and photon B is blue (wavelength = 450 nm), what
color or what wavelength regime is photon A?
FIGURES
PAGE
A-
B- 
C-
D- 
E-
F- 
G- ![]()
H- 
