Exam 2: A Universe Made, a Universe Discovered

Imagine that the Moon's orbit was tilted with respect to the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun by LESS than the actual value of 5 degrees.What is the most likely consequence?

Megaliths like Stonehenge provided astronomical information to ancient societies,including predictions of:

A synodic month is about two days longer than a sidereal month.Why?

The earliest ancient civilization known to have observed and recorded the positions of the planets over long periods was the:

Suppose you traveled back in time and explained to ancient Greek astronomers the true distance to the nearest star.Why might this single fact have convinced them that the heliocentric model was correct?

What aspect of Ptolemy's model would account for the changes in a planet's brightness as it undergoes retrograde motion?

A resident of the Southern Hemisphere observes the Sun's position at noon every day over the course of a year.The Sun will be highest in the sky on:

What kind of eclipse is shown in the image below?

For an observer in the Northern Hemisphere,on which of the following dates does the Sun pass through the lowest altitude point on its analemma?

The astronomer who used the geocentric model to make accurate predictions of planetary positions was:

You observe a lunar eclipse.In what phase must the Moon be?

Describe the changing appearance of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse.

You observe a bright object one night near the North Star at midnight.It does not twinkle.Can this object be a planet? Why or why not?

Place the following ancient astronomers in chronological order,from earliest to most recent:

The following figure shows Earth,the Sun,and three stars,A,B,and C.Where will these stars appear for an observer on the equator at sunset and at midnight?

The Sun's path across the celestial sphere over the course of a year is the:

Label the phases of the Moon shown in the following diagram.Assume that the phases occur chronologically from left to right in the figure.

Which of the following phases of the Moon occurs when Earth is between the Sun and the Moon?

The Babylonians were important to the history of astronomy for all of the following EXCEPT:

An observer on the dwarf planet Pluto sees the Sun pass through a different set of constellations than an observer on Earth over the course of one orbit.Which of the following best explains this?