Seeing Stars: Seasonal cosmic quiz

1. Which of these is not an annual meteor shower?

     a. Orionids

     b. Perseids 

     c. Halleys

2. What are The Pleiades or ‘Seven Sisters’?

     a. Constellation

     b. Star cluster

     c. Galaxy

3. Which of these stars is in the constellation Orion?

     a. Polaris

     b. Procyon

     c. Rigel

4. Which of these is not a naked eye planet?

     a. Uranus

     b. Mercury

     c. Saturn

5. The International Space Station can often be seeing passing over our sky from…?

     a. East to west

     b. West to east

     c. South to north

 

6. Where would you find ‘The Sickle’ in our night sky?

     a. Hercules

     b. Leo

     c. Gemini

7. How many Galilean moons orbit Jupiter?

     a. 4

     b. 3

     c. 6

8. Germans call it the ‘Great Wagon’. What do we call it?

     a. The Great Bear

     b. The Plough

     c. The Great Square

9. In the night sky, the evening star is the same as the morning star, but what is it?

     a. Venus

     b. Moon

     c. North Star

10. Roughly what height do ‘night-shining’ clouds appear?

     a. 5km

     b. 80km

     c. 15km

11. When a rock from space lands on Earth, what is it called?

     a. Meteorite

     b. Meteor

     c. Meteoroid 

12. Which of these stars is not part of the Summer Triangle?

     a. Vega

     b. Deneb

     c. Sirius 

 

13. The constellation Pegasus represents what?

     a. A horse

     b. A goat

     c. A fish

 

14. What is the furthest object you can see with the naked eye?

     a. Milky Way galaxy

     b. Orion nebula 

     c. Andromeda galaxy

 

15. In the Kintyre night sky photo, which constellation is Santa’s sleigh passing by?

     a. Ursa Major (The Great Bear) 

     b. Cygnus (The Swan)

     c.  Orion (The Hunter)

 

16. Roughly how many planets have been discovered outside our solar system?

     a. 50

     b. 500

     c. 5000

 

17. How many Apollo missions with astronauts landed on the Moon?

     a. 5

     b. 6

     c. 7

 

18. When does a lunar eclipse take place?

     a. When the Moon is on the far side of the Sun

     b. When Earth is between the Moon and the Sun

     c. When the Moon is between Earth and the Sun

 

19. Which objects in our solar system are nicknamed ‘dirty snowballs’?

     a. Comets

     b. Dwarf planets

     c. Asteroids

 

20. Where do the high energy particles that cause the Northern Lights come from?

     a. Moon

     b. Deep space

     c. Sun