Exploring the Cosmos - Degree Exam 2014 - Life and Death of Stars (Part 1)
1. A Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is a plot of stars'
mass as a function of their absolute magnitudes.
absolute magnitudes as a function of their spectral types.
spectral types as a function of their distances.
distances as a function of their mass.
2. The study of typical light curves from Type Ia supernovae indicates that
they originate from solar-like stars.
these occur only in distant galaxies.
vast amounts of neutrinos are emitted in the explosion.
radioactive nuclei form as a result of the explosion.
3. Primordial elements were created in
supernovae.
nuclear experiments on Earth.
stellar cores.
the Big Bang.
4. In the modern deï¬nition of the magnitude scale, a change of 5 in the magnitude of an object corresponds to a change in apparent brightness of exactly a factor of
50
5
100
10
5. The Sun is the brightest object in the sky and has an apparent magnitude of
-1
-26.7
1
26.7
6. Spectroscopic parallax is a technique allowing astronomers to
determine the temperature of relatively far-away stars.
infer the mass of relatively far-away stars.
estimate the size of relatively far-away stars.
measure distances to relatively far-away stars.
7. The apparent brightness of a star is
proportional to the square of its luminosity and inversely proportional to its distance.
proportional to its luminosity and inversely proportional to the square of its distance.
inversely proportional to the square of its luminosity and proportional to its distance.
inversely proportional to its luminosity and proportional to the square of its distance.
8. A star’s luminosity class is determined by
its apparent brightness.
its effective temperature.
the abundance of heavy elements in its atmosphere.
the width of its spectral lines.
9. The lifetime of a main-sequence star that is twice as massive as the Sun is
the same as our Sun’s lifetime.
10 times longer than our Sun’s lifetime.
10 times shorter than our Sun’s lifetime.
unknown unless we know its chemical composition.
10. A spectroscopic binary is a pair of stars that
are distant from each other but share the same spectral features.
are very close to each other but can be seen separately with a telescope.
appear by chance to be close to each other but in reality are distant from each other.
are so close to each other that they cannot be seen separately with a telescope.
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