Test Bank for The Essential Cosmic Perspective, 9th Edition by Jeffrey O. Bennett, Chapters 1-24 & S 1-4

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, 6) One light-minute is the distance that light travels in one minute. How far is this, in kilometers?
(Recall that the speed of light is 300,000 km/s.)
A) 300,000 km
B) 18 million km
C) 100 million km
D) 1.08 billion km
E) 9.46 trillion km
Answer: B

7) One light-year is approximately
A) the distance from the Sun to Earth.
B) the speed at which Earth orbits the Sun.
C) 10 trillion kilometers.
D) the same as one regular year.
Answer: C

8) Light takes approximately one second to travel from Earth to the Moon. This means that the
Moon is approximately
A) 1 astronomical unit from Earth.
B) 1 light-year from Earth.
C) 3000 kilometers from Earth.
D) 300,000 kilometers from Earth.
E) near the top of Earth's atmosphere.
Answer: D

9) Sunlight takes about 8.4 minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth. When NASA's New
Horizons Spacecraft passed Pluto in 2015, it was about 32 AU from Earth. About how long did it
take for transmitted images of Pluto to travel from the spacecraft to Earth?
A) one Plutonian year
B) 4-1/2 hours
C) 2-1/4 days
D) 3 weeks
E) They arrived almost instantaneously.
Answer: C

10) The Voyager 2 Spacecraft is currently on its way out of our solar system at a speed of about
50,000 kilometers per hour. It will reach the distance of the nearest star system (beyond our solar
system) in about ________ years.
A) 100
B) 1000
C) 10,000
D) 100,000
E) 1,000,000
Answer: D




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Cosmic Perspective, The, 9th edition Jeffrey O. Bennett

, 11) Suppose we look at a photograph of many galaxies. Assuming that all galaxies formed at
about the same time, which galaxy in the picture is the youngest?
A) the one that is farthest away
B) the one that is reddest in color
C) the one that is bluest in color
D) the one that is closest to us
E) the one that appears smallest in size
Answer: A

12) The farthest galaxies visible in Hubble Space Telescope photos are about ________ light-
years away.
A) 1 million
B) 12 million
C) 1 billion
D) 12 billion
E) 12 trillion
Answer: D

13) Suppose we imagine the Sun to be about the size of a grapefruit. Which of the following best
describes the size and distance of Earth on the same scale?
A) Earth is the size of a tip of a ballpoint pen about 1 meter from the Sun.
B) Earth is the size of a golf ball about 1 meter from the Sun.
C) Earth is the size of a tip of a ballpoint pen about 15 meters from the Sun.
D) Earth is the size of a golf ball about 15 meters from the Sun.
E) Earth is the size of a marble about 25 miles from the Sun.
Answer: C

14) Suppose we imagine the Sun to be about the size of a grapefruit. How big an area would the
orbits of the eight planets of the solar system cover?
A) the size of a typical dorm room
B) the size of a typical campus building
C) the size of a typical campus
D) the size of a small city
E) the size of a western state (e.g., Colorado)
Answer: C

15) Which of the following best describes the Milky Way Galaxy?
A) a spiral galaxy with a disk about 100,000 light-years in diameter
B) a spiral galaxy with a disk about 1 billion kilometers in diameter
C) a spiral galaxy with a disk about 1000 light-years in diameter
D) a spherically shaped galaxy that is about 4 light-years in diameter
E) a spherically shaped galaxy that is about 100,000 light-years in diameter
Answer: A




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Cosmic Perspective, The, 9th edition Jeffrey O. Bennett