Astronomy Quiz
1. If you can see the Moon in the morning, is it waxing or waning?
2. What cycle links Moon-phase to calendar year?
3. Of what period is the Saros?
4. Name two red stars.
5. When do we come closest to the Sun, each year?
6. How high does the Evening Star rise in the sky, i.e. what is Venus' furthest angle from the Sun?
7. How many moons has Mars got, what are they called, and what do their names mean?
8. Which takes longer: a conjunction of the Sun and Mars, or an opposition?
9. Does a superior planet go retrograde at its solar conjunction, or opposition?
10. For what percentage of the time does Venus go retrograde (answer within 5%)?
11. Which planet comes nearest to Earth: Mars, Venus or Mercury?
12. Which planet has the most nearly circular orbit around the Sun?
13. Which planet revolves on its axis in the reverse direction to the solar-system rotation?
14. Whereabouts is the 'eclipse season' at present, in the year?
15. Whereabouts does the Milky Way cut the ecliptic?
16. Name the three animal signs in the zodiac, i.e. represented by animals?
17. In what zodiac sign does the constellation Ophiucus lie?
18. Along what Great Circle would you measure the azimuth?
19. In what year was Pluto discovered?
20. Roughly, what angle does Pluto's orbit make, to the ecliptic?
Answers
1, Waning, i.e. the old Moon
2, The Metonic cycle, of 19 years
3, 18 years and 10 or 11 days (depending on leap year) and a third
4, Antares, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse
5, At perihelion, about January 3rd
6, 47-48° is its 'maximum elongation'
7, It has two, called Deimos & Phobos, ie Fear & Terror
8, A Sun-Mars conjunction takes six times longer, than the opposition
9, retrograde during their opposition to the Sun
10 Only 7% (less than any other planet)
11, 12 and 13, Venus
14, For 2004 it's April/May and Oct/Nov (the Sun then crosses the lunar nodes)
15, At the two solstice points: zero degrees Cancer/Capricorn, or through the constellations Scorpion and Taurus/Gemini
16, Aries, Taurus and Leo (not Capricorn: that's a hybrid, a 'sea-goat')
17, Sagittarius
18, The circle of the horizon
19, 1930
20, 17°
Score, above 14: Well done
