Quiz Preparation

Quizzes will be closed book/closed notes. Usually 10 or so mulitple-choice questions and you will usually have 10 or so minutes. The questions will have a range of difficulty from easy to challenging. Some should be able to snap through and have a enough time to reflect on the harder one or few. As always on mulitple-choice tests, you should do the questions you are sure of first and come back to the others. If you don't know the answer, eliminate the ones you think are wrong and guess. Remember we will have 6 quizzes and will drop the lowest one. Altogether the quizzes count for 40 % of the grade.

Quizzes

  1. The Celestial Sphere
  2. The Moon
  3. Brightness and Color of Stars
  4. Telescopes

  1. The Celestial Sphere

    2. The following sources are recommended for reading and study. The sources overlap considerably. You do NOT have to study them all. You should certainly go over the specified labs. The items IAL, background notes, textbook, and terms are roughly alternatives, but not exactly so.

    There is no end to the studying you can do, but it is only a short quiz. It's worth moderate amount (8 %) of a 1-credit-hour course. One to two hours prep should suffice.

    There will be 10 or so questions and the time will be 10 or so minutes.

    The questions will range from quite easy to challenging.

    After the quiz, the solutions are posted at Celestial Sphere solutions.

    1. Your labs 1 and 2.
    2. IAL 2: The Sky and you can test yourself on Homework 2 with Solution 2 to check your answers. You'll need supersecret @sern#me boz and p@ssw%d CD@boz to access the homeworks and solutions. Alternatives: textbook, background notes, going over most of the terms.
    3. The Celestial Sphere Background Notes These notes are intended to be a complete, concise reference for Lab 2: Celestial Sphere. They may not perfectly fulfill that role.
    4. The textbook Bennett (2008 edition), p. 28--42, 101--110, A-28--34 or the corresponding pages in similar textbooks.
    5. You should also review the following terms: altitude, axial precession, azimuth, celestial equator, celestial globe, celestial sphere, ecliptic equatorial coordinates, equinox, horizon, horizontal coordinates (AKA local coordinates), the meridian (AKA the celestial meridian), nadir, north celestial pole (NCP), orrery, season, solstice, south celestial pole (SCP), zenith. Note that usually you do not need to read a whole Wikipedia article on a term to get sufficient knowledge for a test.

  2. The Moon

    3. The following sources are recommended for reading and study. The sources overlap considerably. You do NOT have to study them all. You should certainly go over the specified lab. The items IAL, and textbook are roughly alternatives, but not exactly so. The items Wikipedia article and terms are roughly alternatives, but not exactly so.

    There is no end to the studying you can do, but it is only a short quiz. It's worth moderate amount (8 %) of a 1-credit-hour course. One to two hours prep should suffice.

    There will be 10 or so questions and the time will be 10 or so minutes.

    The questions will range from quite easy to challenging.

    After the quiz, the solutions are posted at The Moon solutions.

    1. Your lab 4.
    2. IAL 3: The Moon: Orbit, Phases, Eclipses, and More: Phases of the Moon and you can test yourself on the Homework 3 questions on lunar phases with Solution 3 to check your answers. You'll need supersecret @sern#me boz and p@ssw%d CD@boz to access the homeworks and solutions. Alternatives: textbook, going over most of the terms.
    3. The Wikipedia: Lunar geology.
    4. The textbook Bennett (2008 edition), p. 42--45 on lunar phases. or the corresponding pages in similar textbooks.
    5. You should also review the following terms: crater central peak, far side of the Moon, impact crater, lunar highlands, lunar maria, lunar phase, near side of the Moon, rayed crater, rille, terraced crater, walled plain (but this doesn't seem a complete definition).

  3. Brightness and Color of Stars

    4. The following sources are recommended for reading and study. The sources overlap considerably. You do NOT have to study them all. You should certainly go over the specified lab/labs. The items 2, 3, and 5 are roughly equivalent, but NOT exactly so.

    There is no end to the studying you can do, but it is only a short quiz. It's worth moderate amount (8 %) of a 1-credit-hour course. One to two hours prep should suffice.

    There will be 10 or so questions and the time will be 10 or so minutes.

    The questions will range from quite easy to challenging.

    After the quiz, the solutions are posted at Brightness and Color of Stars solutions.

    1. Your lab 10.
    2. Read a sufficient amount of the articles linked to the following terms etc. so that you can define and/or understand the terms etc. at the level of our class: Alpha Aquarii, absolute magnitude, apparent magnitude, color index, giant star, Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram, luminosity, luminosity function (astronomy), magnitude, main sequence, Omicron Ursae Majoris, stellar classification, supergiant, Wikipedia: List of Brightest Stars. zero-age main sequence (ZAMS).
    3. IAL 20: The Nature of Stars
    4. Lab 10: Instructor Notes: Startup Presentation
    5. Bennett (2008 edition): p. 518--538 and A-21 on stars or the corresponding pages in similar books.

  4. Telescopes