Astronomical Phenomena Trivia

1. In an eclipse, what term describes the apparent size of the Moon in comparison to the apparent size of the Sun?

From Quiz Daytime Darkness

Answer: magnitude

A total eclipse has a magnitude greater than 1. During a total eclipse, the Moon completely covers a person's view of the Sun.

From Quiz Really Outta This World Quiz

Answer: Solar eclipse

A solar eclipse can be either full or partial. On average, there are about 2.4 solar eclipses per year, but they can be seen only from certain areas. A total eclipse could be happening somewhere right now, and you would be unaware of it if you were not in its path. A solar eclipse can only happen when there is a new moon.

From Quiz When Stars Die

Answer: Sequence

After its initial formation from a giant nebula of gas, nuclear fusion begins in the star's core. The energy from the heat that this creates balances the pressure from its gravity and keeps it from collapsing. In this state of equilibrium, the star will begin to burn steadily, for a few million years in the case of the most massive stars to around 10 billion years in the case of a relatively small star such as our sun. This long period of equilibrium is called the main sequence. As the star eventually uses up all its fuel, the equilibrium is lost, the star moves off the main sequence, and the fireworks begin.

From Quiz Comets and Global Armageddon!

Answer: Shoemaker-Levy 9

Shoemaker-Levy 9's king hits on Jupiter re-wrote planetary development theory. It showed how vulnerable the Earth is to massive impact and gave credence to Eugene Shoemaker's controversial identification of dozens of massive impact craters on the earth. Revolutionary comet theorist Shoemaker just missed being the first scientist on the moon during the Apollo program, after being disqualified due to Addison's Disease (the same adrenal disorder suffered by John F. Kennedy). The largest Shoemaker-Levy impact was roughly the size of the Earth's radius and hit with the force of 6,000,000 megatons of TNT. That's about the energy equivalent of a 2,300,000,000,000,000 burner barbecue, set to medium.

From Quiz Meteor Showers

Answer: Glowing debris in the Earth's atmosphere.

A meteor shower can occur annually or randomly; it is characterized by a larger number of meteors in the sky than usual.

From Quiz Amazing Astronomical Phenomena and Terminology

Answer: They are the core remains from most burned out stars

White dwarf stars are indeed the remnants of lower mass stars which make up over 95% of the stellar population. White dwarfs are very dense with a mass similar to the Sun's and a volume similar to Earth's. They are not very bright because their light comes from left over thermal radiation rather than fusion, which is no longer occurring. As lower mass stars, such as our sun, use up their hydrogen for fusion, they first expand into red giant stars. They then shed their outer material which becomes a planetary nebula. The remaining core is a white dwarf.

From Quiz Daytime Darkness

Answer: 5

The five phases are first contact, second contact, totality, third contact, and fourth contact. Combined, these phases can last up to 3 hours. Totality usually lasts no longer than 7.5 minutes.

From Quiz Really Outta This World Quiz

Answer: Meteor showers

Meteor showers occur when the Earth's orbit passes through the debris trail left by a comet. Most meteors are caused by tiny particles no bigger than a grain of sand. Because they are traveling at great speeds, they encounter friction from the Earth's atmosphere and burn up. There are dozens of annual meteor showers, but some produce more meteors than others. Two of the most impressive displays are the Perseids, which occur in mid-August, and the Geminids in mid-December. Meteor showers are named for the constellation from which the meteors appear to radiate.

From Quiz When Stars Die

Answer: Hydrogen

With a single proton and electron, hydrogen atoms are by far the most common element in the universe and make up the bulk of the star's mass. The immense pressure of this mass forces the hydrogen atoms together to form helium, element number 2 on your table, with two protons and two electrons.

From Quiz Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Answer: Their energy spectrum is characteristic of thermal radiation from a source at that temperature.

Pure thermal radiation follows what is called a "black body spectrum" - so named because it's the spectrum of light that would be emitted by a perfectly black object that absorbs all the light that strikes it. The cosmic microwave background is the most perfect black body spectrum that has ever been measured - in fact, for the published COBE graph of the spectrum, the line that traces the theoretical calculation is famously thicker than the error bars on the data! The cosmic microwave background dates from the moment when the universe first became transparent to light; in effect, it gives the thermal spectrum of the universe just before that moment, about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Everything was quite hot then, of course, but since then even the background radiation has cooled: as the universe expands, so too do the wavelengths of the photons (a phenomenon called redshift, since it shifts the wavelengths toward the red end of the spectrum). Astronomers searching the sky eons from now might not ever see this background - the photons will have redshifted too much to be seen.

From Quiz Star Wars

Answer: Blue stragglers

The main sequence of stars refers to the position of stars on a graph called a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, which plots a star's brightness (on the vertical axis) against its color (on the horizontal axis). Most stars fall within a wide band called the main sequence, which is considered to represent 'normal' stellar evolution. Blue stragglers are stars in a globular cluster that are brighter, bluer and heavier than the pattern suggests they should be. One explanation for their existence is that they were formed when two old main sequence stars collided. The renewed fusion cycle would produce a younger-seeming star, as is the case for a blue straggler.

From Quiz Comets and Global Armageddon!

Answer: Tunguska, Siberia

The Tunguska event had an impact radius of over 830 square miles - over twice the size of metropolitan New York, with an estimated energy of 10-15 megatons. The massive impact produced an air-pressure surge that was recorded in Great Britain. Fortunately for humanity, but rather annoying in a venison barbecue kind of way for Siberian reindeer, it hit a sparsely populated area. So remote was the impact area, that it was not scientifically investigated until 1921.

From Quiz Meteor Showers

Answer: Perseids

The beautiful Perseids peak every year around August 12th.

From Quiz Daytime Darkness

Answer: the outer layer of the Sun's atmosphere

You usually cannot see the Sun's corona because the photosphere outshines the corona, so it is not easily seen.

From Quiz Really Outta This World Quiz

Answer: Conjunction

Two, three, or even more planets may seem to be very close together in the sky at certain times. Some astronomers believe that the "Star of Bethlehem" mentioned in the Bible was actually a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

From Quiz Meteor Showers

Answer: The constellation which they appear to be falling from.

The Perseid meteor shower appears to radiate from the constellation Perseus.

From Quiz Amazing Astronomical Phenomena and Terminology

Answer: At the periphery of our solar system

The Oort Cloud is a region at the gravitational margins of our Solar System. Objects at this distance (as far as 3.2 light-years) are very weakly bound to the Solar System. Most of the material in this region is in the form of frozen compounds such as water, methane, ethane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. The Oort Cloud is the primary source of long-period comets (those which take more than 200 years to complete an orbit around the Sun) . Because objects in the Oort Cloud are weakly affected by the sun's gravity, perturbations in the gravitational field can dislodge them from the Oort Cloud and send them into inner solar system orbits as comets.

From Quiz Let's Be Clear About Nebulae

Answer: 1600s

The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky and is visible to the naked eye. It is located in the constellation of Orion and is considered to be the middle object in the sword of Orion. The discovery that the Orion Nebula is a diffuse object rather than a star is generally credited to French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc when he made a record of observing it with a refracting telescope in 1610. The first published observation of the nebula was by Johann Baptist Cysat of Lucerne in his 1619 monograph on comets.

From Quiz Really Outta This World Quiz

Answer: Grand syzygy

Syzygy is a good word to know if you play Scrabble. A syzygy is the term for "a straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system." A "grand syzygy" is when the Earth and all of the planets are located on the same side of the sun, although they may not be in exact alignment. All sorts of doomsday predictions were made concerning this event; one book, "The Jupiter Effect," predicted a massive earthquake along the San Andreas fault. Of course, none of the predictions came true. If this sort of thing worries you, the next "grand syzygy" will not happen until May 19, 2161 when all the planets except Pluto (which is no longer considered a planet) will be within 69 degrees of each other.

From Quiz When Stars Die

Answer: A white dwarf

After their red-giant phase, small stars such as our sun will collapse to stellar remnants whose mass is below the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses. These stars will finish not with a bang, but with a whimper. Their gravity will not be strong enough to collapse them any further and they will settle into a new equilibrium as "white dwarfs". Gradually, over a period lasting hundreds of millions of years, they will fade away. That's not to say that a white dwarf's gravity is "weak", however. These stellar corpses are extremely compact and dense. A white dwarf is squeezed into a sphere roughly the size of Earth. However, it contains as much mass as the sun, and its gravity is therefore a million times stronger than Earth's.

From Quiz Comets and Global Armageddon!

Answer: Encke

Encke is believed to be responsible for the Taurid meteor shower, known as the 'Halloween Fireballs'. There is also debate as to whether a chunk of Encke is the source of a possible impact in the Fertile Crescent around 1200BCE, causing a period of rapid decline called the Bronze Age Collapse, when the Hittite, Egyptian and Mycenaean cultures abruptly declined into a dark age. The 2007 discovery of a crater dating from this time near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates gives credence to this hypothesis, and may indicate the origins of the 'Seven Judges of Hell' who 'smashed the land like a cup' in the ancient Gilgamesh epic. Or it may not.

From Quiz Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Answer: Sound waves

What we call sound waves are carried via vibrations, which stretch some regions while compressing others. Most of the sounds we encounter in everyday life are carried by vibrations in the air, and new swimmers soon learn that vibrations in water also carry sound. At this point, science fiction fans may be starting to mutter. After all, it's a well-known fact that space is silent: in a vacuum, there's nothing to vibrate. So how can we talk about sound waves traveling through the early universe? It turns out that this is not a problem: the early universe was so much denser that sound waves, triggered by density disturbances left by cosmic inflation, could indeed travel through. Since all the sound waves began at the same moment, the result was much like the tones and overtones of a musical instrument, forever recorded in the cosmic microwave background.

From Quiz Meteor Showers

Answer: radiant

An observer might see a meteor anywhere in the sky. However, when the direction of motion is traced back, it will point to the radiant.

From Quiz Amazing Astronomical Phenomena and Terminology

Answer: Brown dwarfs

Brown dwarfs are in between planets and typical active stars in mass. Although they can be roughly the same size as Jupiter, they have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets but less than the main-sequence stars. Main-sequence stars, like our own Sun, fuse hydrogen into helium. Brown dwarfs do not have enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen into helium but they can emit some electromagnetic radiation and heat from the fusion of deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron in addition to the proton in the nucleus). The first definite brown dwarf was discovered in the mid-1990s. Because they have relatively low surface temperatures, they are not very bright at visible wavelengths of light and instead emit most of their electromagnetic energy in the infrared.

From Quiz Let's Be Clear About Nebulae

Answer: William Herschel

"The Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars" was first published by William Herschel in 1786 and initially contained records of 1,000 objects based on the observations of him and his sister Caroline. In 1789, another 1,000 entries were added and, in 1802, 500 more entries were added bringing the total number of objects in the catalogue to 2,500. Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) improved the design of telescopes, studied the rings of Saturn and discovered its largest moon, Titan. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is best known for formulating the laws of planetary motion and he also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope. Edmond Halley (1656-1742) recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun and computed the periodicity of a comet. It was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758 which he, unfortunately, did not live to see.

From Quiz Daytime Darkness

Answer: new moon

During the new moon phase, the moon moves to the side of the Earth that faces the sun. This allows the three bodies to sometimes line up, creating an eclipse.

From Quiz Really Outta This World Quiz

Answer: Binary stars

Binary stars are what we call the phenomenon of two stars orbiting around one center of mass. The brighter is referred to as the "primary" or "Alpha" star in the pair. There are also higher-order groupings of stars, called multiple star systems. It is estimated that about one-third of the stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, belong to binary star systems. If you have very good eyesight, you can observe a binary star system in the constellation Ursa Major, commonly known as the "Big Dipper." The second star from the end of the handle is called Mizar; it has a faint companion star known as Alcor, which is just visible to the naked eye.

From Quiz When Stars Die

Answer: Supernova & Super nova & Supernovae

As massive stars convert more and more silicon into iron, which they cannot burn, the iron builds up in their core. Eventually, the mass of the iron in the core reaches the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses and its internal pressure can no longer balance against the crushing pressure of its gravity. The iron core suddenly collapses into a small, unimaginably dense object. As the core implodes, the outer layers of the supergiant star implode with it. When these outer layers hit the compressed, rigid core, they are repelled back into space at speeds of around 45 million miles per hour. Vast amounts of energy are released in a supernova, making it incredibly luminous. The most recent supernova recorded by observers on Earth, in 1604, took place 20,000 light years from us, but was so bright that it was visible in daylight.

From Quiz Star Wars

Answer: Gamma-ray burst

Gamma-rays are an extremely high-energy form of radiation. Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (lasting around half a minute) are associated with the supernova event in which a young and very heavy star collapses to form a neutron star or a black hole. Short-duration bursts last less than a second, and were first observed in the late 1960s. Until 2005, there was insufficient evidence to provide any explanation of their occurrence. In that year two short-duration GRBs were detected under conditions that allowed a careful study of them, leading to the conclusion that they were definitely not produced by a single-star event, and the proposal that they could be explained by the collision of two neutron stars or of a neutron star with a black hole. If this is so, observations on them may lead to the detection of the gravitational waves that Einstein predicted should be generated when neutron stars collide.

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Last Updated Nov 01 2025 5:46 AM

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