Utah State University

PHYSICS 3030

QUIZ 2/ CHAPTER 2

1)Please match these objects in order from SMALLEST to LARGEST

2. Over the course of a year you measure the extremes of parallax motion of 2 different stars. If Star A moves 0.5 arcseconds across its background and Star B moves 0.25 arcseconds across its background, Star A is further away from Earth.

3. If you were to measure the parallax angle of a star from the extremes of Earth's orbit and then go to Mars and measure the parallax angle of the same star from the extremes of Mars' orbit the parallax angle would (hint: Mars is further away from the sun than we are)

4. Where do we get the majority of our information about the rest of the universe?

5. Where were the elements Carbon, Oxygen, and Iron, which make up a large portion of all organic life first formed?

6. When we measure the distance to an astronomical object using parallax we look at the apparent motion of one star in reference to background stars. In reality the background stars, the star we are trying to measure the distance to and the earth are all moving.

The movement of which of these has the most impact when calculatingdistance using parallax? (Hint: Think about what object has the biggest effect in the parallax equation we use.)

7. Please match the unit with the correct power of 10.

8. Star A is 5.46 light years away from earth. How long, in years, does it take for light from Star A to get to Earth?