Solar System and Astronomy Overview

The Solar System

• The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter contains rocky objects.
• The Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune, is made up of icy bodies.
• The Oort Cloud, farthest from the Sun, is a vast, spherical region of icy comets.
• Comets, composed of dust, rock, and ice, have irregular orbits.
• Ganymede, Jupiter's moon, is the largest moon in the Solar System.
• The Sun is approximately 4.5 billion years old and makes up 98.8% of the solar system's mass.
• Venus and Mercury, closer to the Sun, have shorter orbital periods than Earth and are nearly perfect spheres.
• Mars has the largest volcano in the Solar System.
• All planets except Earth are named after Greek or Roman deities.
• No photograph of the solar system within the Milky Way exists.

Astronomy

• Astronomy uses refractor and reflector telescopes.
• Apollo 11 was the first successful human landing on the Moon.
• Neutron stars and black holes are byproducts of supernovae, the deaths of stars.
• Core-collapse supernovae happen during massive star death; thermal runaway supernovae are another type.
• No probe has yet landed on Jupiter or Saturn.
• The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way, approximately 2.5 million light-years away.

Earth and the Moon

• Earth rotates west to east, and is 150 million kilometres from the Sun.
• Earth's atmosphere is roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.
• Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth at 300,000 km/s.
• Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth besides the Sun.
• The Moon lacks an atmosphere, orbits Earth in 27 days, and reflects sunlight.
• The Moon goes through eight distinct phases.
• A Blue Moon occurs when two full moons appear in a single month (approximately every 2.7 years).

Explore the fascinating components of the Solar System and key astronomical phenomena. This quiz covers everything from the asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt to the characteristics of planets and moons. Test your knowledge about celestial bodies and their properties in our universe!