ASTR 1010 Fall 2019: Study Guide for Quiz #4

READING: Chapters 5 and 6; Sections 15.1 and 15.2.

Topics you should know and understand for Quiz #4 (not necessarily a complete list)

1) DEFINITIONS: Diffraction; Diffraction Grating; Light Gathering Power; Refraction; Reflection; Chromatic Aberration; Concave Mirror; Convex Mirror; Focus; Focal length; Interferometer; Terrestrial Planets; Jovian Planets; Kuiper Belt Objects; Oort Cloud; planet; dwarf planet; Ceres; brown dwarf; angular momentum; planetesimals; differentiation.

2) Laws and Equations: The Law of Reflection; The relationship between resolution, wavelength, and the telescope size; the relationship between the diameter of a telescope and its light-gathering power; angular momentum is proportion to mass X velocity X radius, where the velocity is the spin or orbital velocity of the object, and the radius is the radius of the object (for spin motion) or the distance from the object to the center of orbit (for orbital motion); conservation of angular momentum.

3) OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: In the diffraction of waves, the relationship between the amount that the wave bends, the size of the door, and the wavelength; the basic designs of telescopes (i.e,. refracting, Newtonian, Prime Focus, Cassegrain, or Coude). Which wavelengths of light get through the Earth's atmosphere; Special requirements for infrared, X-ray, and Gamma-ray telescopes; the advantages of using interferometers; the standard model for how the solar system formed, and the evidence for this scenario; the relative sizes of the larger moons and the planets; which planets and moons have unusual spins or orbits; the relative spin rates of the planets and why they are different; how a planet and a dwarf planet differ, according to the IAU definitions; the approximate number of spacecraft that visited each planet; the primary target(s) of the Messenger, Magellan, Viking, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Galileo, Cassini, and New Horizons spacecraft; why the terrestrial planets have different densities than the Jovian planets; the order of the Galilean moons from Jupiter and ideas on why their densities are different.