Study Guide for Exam#1
The first in-class exam will be on Wednesday, 22 September 2010. It will
consist of 25 multiple-choice questions, and you will fill
in your answers in an accompanying "bubble" form with a #2 pencil.
Hints for studying:
- Below is a list of the various topics we've touched on this first month of class. You are responsible for knowing what they mean and the context in which they fit into this class.
- Remember, your book has a lot of detail that we didn't cover in class.
Use your course notes (and lecture notes on the web) as a GUIDE, and
read the book for more information, look at the pictures to understand
the concepts, especially the night sky information.
- Remeber to work SLOWLY and CAREFULLY. There are only 25 questions, so you should have more than enough time to find the answers, put them in your bubble sheet, and then recheck your choices.
- Make sure to READ the questions carefully. It really helps to DRAW A PICTURE if the question is complicated. Some incorrect answers are going to look very tempting, so make sure you know WHAT THE QUESTION IS ASKING. That is half the battle of finding the right answer.
You can also eliminate choices by figuring out which ones are WRONG.
- List of topics we've covered so far:
- Introduction (Ch 1)
- Powers of Ten, Scientific Notation
- Angular sizes: degree, arcminute, arcsecond
- The Night Sky (Ch 2)
- Observing at Night (star chart): zenith, azimuth, horizon
- Apparent motions of the stars (diurnal motion of Earth)
- Length of "day" due to diurnal motion
- Apparent motions of the constellations (annual motion of Earth)
- Celestial Sphere (celestial equator, North and South Celestial poles)
- What does the sky look like from Equator, Poles, Iowa?
- Ecliptic
- Seasons (equinoxes, solstices)
- Phases of the Moon and time of rising/setting for full and new moons
- Eclipses: lunar and solar
- Physics for Astrophysics (Ch 5)
- Gravity and Newton's Law for Universal Gravitation
- Weightlessness, Escape Velocity, What keeps the Space Shuttle in orbit?
- Tides (and relation between Sun/Moon/Earth; Spring Tides, Neap Tides)
- Nature of Electromagnetic Radiation (Ch 6)
- Wave properties: frequency, wavelength
- The Doppler Effect: What happens if the object emitting light is moving?
- The Electromagnetic spectrum: can you order all parts in decreasing wavelength order and decreasing frequency order?
- Energy of Light: how does it depend on
- Telescopes & Observing (Ch 7)
- Refraction and lenses
- Reflection and mirrors
- Types of telescopes
- Observing the EM Spectrum from Earth - which types of EM radiation get through? Which get trapped in atmosphere and why?
- What makes a good observing site?
- Examples of Space-based telescopes: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Sophia IR observatory
- Basic Stellar Properties (Ch 16)
- Star Names
- Stellar Distances: Parallax, nearest star distance, Hipparcos, GAIA
- Stellar brightnesses: brightness, flux, distance, inverse square law for brightness
- Magnitude System: how is it organized? Is it linear or logarithmic? Apparent magnitude vs. Absolute magnitude?
- Stellar temperatures: Blackbodies & Wien's Law
- Stellar spectroscopy: understanding spectra (Kirkoff's Laws), stellar types and classification, Doppler Effect on stellar spectra
- H-R Diagram: The variety of stars