Exam 2: Gravitation and the Waltz of the Planets

An inferior planet moves more or less directly toward Earth at greatest eastern elongation.What does this mean when you are watching the night-by-night motion of this planet against the background stars?

Parallax:

The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe had a young assistant who became famous himself some time later.His name was:

The BEST time(s)to see inferior planets from Earth is/are when these planets are at positions of:

The epicycle,in the Greek planetary model,is the:

Suppose an asteroid is discovered with an elliptical orbit,a period of exactly one year,and perihelion 0.5 AU from the Sun.Using Kepler's third law,how far from the Sun is this asteroid at aphelion? (Drawing a diagram of the orbit,including the Sun,will help.)

One of the major contributions of Galileo Galilei to the development of modern astronomy was:

Kepler as a young man became the assistant to:

Venus experiences all of the following EXCEPT ONE.Which is the exception?

The strength of gravity on Mars is about 40% of that on Earth.If your mass on Earth is 60 kg,what would your WEIGHT be on Mars?

A scientific theory is accepted as the BEST description of a certain phenomenon if it:

Copernicus lived:

Nicolaus Copernicus was the first person to:

Which of the following situations describes an acceptable path for a body gravitationally bound to the Sun?

Venus can pass in front of the Sun as seen from Earth when it is at:

Retrograde motion of a planet is:

On the Moon,where gravity is 1/6 of Earth's gravity,which of the following activities would an astronaut NOT find easier to carry out?

Two of Kepler's laws of planetary motion applied to Earth are that the radius vector from the Sun to Earth sweeps out equal areas in equal times and that Earth's orbit is an ellipse with the Sun at one focus.One consequence of these laws is that:

Which of the following four objects or persons is NOT accelerating?

In Ptolemy's geocentric theory of the solar system,what name is given to the small circle around which the planet moves while the center of this circle orbits Earth?