Astrophysics Grade 10 Our Solar System Test Your Knowledge

Questions

1. What is the correct order of the 8 planets from the Sun?

2. Which planet used to be named "Georgium Sidus" after King George III?

3. Which two planets have retrograde rotation (backwards/clockwise)?

4. Which two planets do not have any moons?

5. Which massive planet is a "brown dwarf" or "failed star?"

6. What are the names of the two classic belts in our Solar System?

7. Which icy region of our Solar System surrounds it like a bubble?

8. Which planet was discovered mathematically before it was ever seen?

9. Which planets in our Solar System currently have ice/dust rings?

10. Which asteroid was once classified as a planet in the early 1800's?

11. Which planet is home to the largest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons?

12. Which two planets rotate slower than they revolve around the sun (in other word, its day

is longer than its year)?

13. What is the name of the largest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO)?

14. Which planet has the hottest average temperature as a result of its thick cloud layer,

which produces an extreme "greenhouse effect?"

15. Which planet has highest wind speeds in the Solar System (> 600 miles per hour)?

16. Which red planet has frozen polar ice caps?

17. What does AU stand for with regard to distance?

18. Which planet has the most moons (64 in 2012)?

19. What is the name of the largest moon in the Solar System?

20. Which moon is considered the most likely place to find life in our Solar System?

21. Which former planet has blue methane snow during its winter season?

22. Which planet has a density that is less than the density of water (< 1g/mL)?

23. Which spacecraft mission is the only one to have flown past Pluto?

24. The tail of a comet always points away from what?

25. The Asteroid Belt is located between which two planets?

26. A meteoroid is a chunk of rock or dust in space. A meteor (shooting star) is a meteoroid

that has been captured by the gravity of a planet, moon or other asteroid. What is the

name of a meteor that has made impact with the surface of another place?

27. What do you call the place around a star in which "life as we know it" could exist?

28. Earth, Mars, Saturn and Neptune all have a tilted axis, and therefore must have what?

29. Where is the only other place in our Solar System that humans have visited?

30. Which planet has an extreme tilt of 98 degrees (rotates on its side)?

31. Which two planets cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye, that is, without the

assistance of binoculars or a telescope?

32. In what year was the first extrasolar system discovered (outside our Solar System)?

33. What is the cause of a planet or moon's protective magnetic field?

Astrophysics Grade 10 Our Solar System Test Your Knowledge

Questions and Answers

1. What is the correct order of the 8 planets from the Sun?

2. Which planet used to be named "Georgium Sidus" after King George III?

Uranus From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus)

This article is about the planet.

Uranus presented a featureless disk to Voyager 2 in 1986. Its

appearance reflects the presence of a high-altitude

hydrocarbon photochemical haze overlying clouds of

methane, which in turn overlie clouds of hydrogen sulfide

and/or ammonia (below these are additional unseen cloud

decks of different compositions). The blue-green coloration

results from the absorption bands of methane.

Discovered by: William Herschel

Discovery date: March 13, 1781

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-

largest planetary mass in the Solar System.

Uranus is similar in composition to Neptune, and both are of different chemical composition than

the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. For this reason, astronomers sometimes place them in a

separate category called "ice giants".

Uranus's atmosphere, although similar to Jupiter's and Saturn's in its primary composition of

hydrogen and helium, contains more "ices" such as water, ammonia, and methane, along with

traces of hydrocarbons.[12] It is the coldest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System, with a

minimum temperature of 49 K (−224.2 °C), and has a complex, layered cloud structure, with water

thought to make up the lowest clouds, and methane the uppermost layer of clouds.[12] In contrast,

the interior of Uranus is mainly composed of ices and rock.[11]

In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars,

Jupiter and Saturn were given to the Planets, as being the names of their

principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era it would

hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method and call it Juno,

Figure 1 - Uranus

Pallas, Apollo or Minerva, for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration of any

particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology: if in any future age it should be

asked, when this last-found Planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say,

'In the reign of King George the Third'.

William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus

Herschel's proposed name was not popular outside of Britain, and alternatives were soon proposed.

Astronomer Jérôme Lalande proposed that it be named Herschel in honour of its discoverer.[34]

Swedish astronomer Erik Prosperin proposed the name Neptune, which was supported by other

astronomers who liked the idea to commemorate the victories of the British Royal Naval fleet in the

course of the American Revolutionary War by calling the new planet even Neptune George III or

Neptune Great Britain.[27] Bode opted for Uranus, the Latinized version of the Greek god of the sky,

Ouranos. Bode argued that just as Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the new planet should be named

after the father of Saturn.[31] In 1789, Bode's Royal Academy colleague Martin Klaproth named his

newly discovered element "uranium" in support of Bode's choice.[37] Ultimately, Bode's suggestion

became the most widely used, and became universal in 1850 when HM Nautical Almanac Office, the

final holdout, switched from using Georgium Sidus to Uranus.[35]

3. Which two planets have retrograde rotation (backwards/clockwise)?

Retrograde motion is motion in the direction opposite to the movement of something else and the

contrary of direct or prograde motion. This motion can be the orbit of one body about another body

or about some other point, or the rotation of a single body about its axis, or other phenomena such

as precession or nutation of the axis. In reference to celestial systems, retrograde motion usually

means motion which is contrary to the rotation of the primary, that is, the object which forms the

system's hub.

All eight planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in the direction that the Sun is rotating, which is

counterclockwise when viewed from above the Sun's north pole.

Six of the planets also rotate about their axis in this same direction.

The exceptions—the planets with retrograde rotation—are Venus and Uranus.

Pluto also has retrograde rotation (Pluto is a dwarf planet)

4. Which two planets do not have any moons?

5. Which massive planet is a "brown dwarf" or "failed star?"

brown dwarf - A celestial body with insufficient mass to sustain the nuclear fusion that produces

radiant energy in normal stars. It is believed that a brown dwarf is formed with enough mass to start

nuclear fusion in its core, but without enough for the fusion to become self-sustaining. Theory

suggests that a body with about one percent of the mass of the Sun, or ten times the mass of

Jupiter, can generate this initial fusion, but that it needs at least eight percent of the Sun's mass to

sustain the fusion. After the fusion ends, the dwarf still glows for a period from radiating heat, with

a surface temperature of about 2,500°K (4,532°F) or less.

6. What are the names of the two classic belts in our Solar System?

Asteroid belt and Kuiper belt

7. Which icy region of our Solar System surrounds it like a bubble?

The heliosphere is a region of space dominated by the Sun, a sort of bubble of charged particles in

the space surrounding the Solar System. These particles are "blown" out from the sun by the solar

wind and into the interstellar medium, the hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy.

Although electrically neutral atoms from the extra-solar volume can penetrate this bubble, virtually

all of the material in the heliosphere emanates from the Sun itself. The Sun's Corona is so hot that

particles reach escape velocity, streaming outwards at 300 to 800 km/s (671 thousand to 1.79

million mph) producing the solar wind.[1] The basic structure is that the wind travels outward until

the 'termination shock', then the 'heliosheath', then finally the 'heliopause'; the limited data and

unexplored nature of these structures has resulted in many theories.

8. Which planet was discovered mathematically before it was ever seen?

The planet Neptune was mathematically predicted before it was directly observed. With a

prediction by Urbain Le Verrier, telescopic observations confirming the existence of a major planet

were made on the night of September 23–24, 1846,[1] at the Berlin Observatory, by astronomer

Johann Gottfried Galle (assisted by Heinrich Louis d'Arrest), working from Le Verrier's calculations. It

was a sensational moment of 19th century science and dramatic confirmation of Newtonian

gravitational theory. In François Arago's apt phrase, Le Verrier had discovered a planet "with the

point of his pen".

In retrospect, after it was discovered it turned out it had been observed many times before but not

recognized, and there were others who made various calculations about its location, which did not

lead to its observation. By 1846 the planet Uranus had completed nearly one full orbit since its

discovery by William Herschel in 1781, and astronomers had detected a series of irregularities in its

path which could not be entirely explained by Newton's law of gravitation. These irregularities

could, however, be resolved if the gravity of a farther, unknown planet were disturbing its path

around the Sun. In 1845 astronomers Urbain Le Verrier in Paris and John Couch Adams in Cambridge

separately began calculations to determine the nature and position of such a planet. Unfortunately,

Le Verrier's triumph also led to a tense international dispute over priority, as, shortly after the

discovery, George Airy, at the time British Astronomer Royal, announced that Adams had also

predicted the discovery of the planet.[2] Nevertheless, the Royal Society awarded Le Verrier the

Copley medal in 1846 for his achievement, without mention of Adams.[3]

The discovery of Neptune led to the discovery of its moon Triton by William Lassell just seventeen

days later.[4]

9. Which planets in our Solar System currently have ice/dust rings?

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune

10. Which asteroid was once classified as a planet in the early 1800's?

Ceres … now been classified as a Dwarf Planet

11. Which planet is home to the largest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons?

Mars

12. Which two planets rotate slower than they revolve around the sun (in other word, its

day is longer than its year)?

Mercury and Venus

13. What is the name of the largest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO)?

Eris – now also classified as a Dwarf Planet

14. Which planet has the hottest average temperature as a result of its thick cloud layer,

which produces an extreme "greenhouse effect?"

Venus

15. Which planet has highest wind speeds in the Solar System (> 600 miles per hour)?

Neptune

16. Which red planet has frozen polar ice caps?

Mars

17. What does AU stand for with regard to distance?

Astronomical Unit (distance between the Earth and the Sun)

18. Which planet has the most moons (64 in 2012)?

Jupiter

19. What is the name of the largest moon in the Solar System?

Gyanamede (moon of Jupiter)

20. Which moon is considered the most likely place to find life in our Solar System?

Europa (moon of Jupiter)

21. Which former planet has blue methane snow during its winter season?

Pluto

22. Which planet has a density that is less than the density of water (< 1g/mL)?

Saturn

23. Which spacecraft mission is the only one to have flown past Pluto?

Voyager (I and II)

24. The tail of a comet always points away from what?

The Sun

25. The Asteroid Belt is located between which two planets?

Between Mars and Jupiter

26. A meteoroid is a chunk of rock or dust in space. A meteor (shooting star) is a meteoroid

that has been captured by the gravity of a planet, moon or other asteroid. What is the

name of a meteor that has made impact with the surface of another place?

Meteorite

27. What do you call the place around a star in which "life as we know it" could exist?

Goldilocks Zone / Habitable Zone

28. Earth, Mars, Saturn and Neptune all have a tilted axis, and therefore must have what?

Seasons

29. Where is the only other place in our Solar System that humans have visited?

Earth’s Moon

30. Which planet has an extreme tilt of 98 degrees (rotates on its side)?

Uranus

31. Which two planets cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye, that is, without the

assistance of binoculars or a telescope?

Uranus and Neptune

32. In what year was the first extrasolar system discovered (outside our Solar System)?

1995 – around 51 Pegasi

33. What is the cause of a planet or moon's protective magnetic field?

Flowing, liquid metal in its core

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