Astronomy Discoveries Quiz

Who was the influential astronomer who discovered Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610?

• Nicolaus Copernicus

• Isaac Newton

• Galileo Galilei

• Johannes Kepler

Which planet was discovered in 1781 by Frederick William Herschel using a telescope he built himself?

• Uranus

• Saturn

• Mars

• Neptune

What process in stars fuses hydrogen atoms into helium and eventually produces heavier elements?

• Stellar Evolution

• Nuclear Fission

• Stellar Nucleosynthesis

• Nuclear Fusion

What is the name of the first galaxy other than our own to be conclusively identified?

• Triangulum Galaxy

• Andromeda Galaxy

• Whirlpool Galaxy

• Milky Way

Who predicted the existence of black holes in 1916 as a result of his theory of relativity?

• Isaac Newton

• Albert Einstein

• Carl Sagan

• Stephen Hawking

What is thought to make up about 85 percent of the matter in the universe and is needed to make sense of the gravitational effects on galaxies?

• Gravitational Waves

• Dark Energy

• Dark Matter

• Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

What phenomenon occurs when large objects in outer space move further away and the wavelength of the light is stretched toward the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum?

• Yellowshift

• Green Shift

• Blueshift

• Redshift

Who demonstrated in 1929 that the universe is expanding and that the rate of expansion is speeding up?

• Vesto Slipher

• George Lemaitre

• Carl Sagan

• Edwin Hubble

What is the name of the radiation left behind by the Big Bang that can still be detected today?

• Cosmic Infrared Background Radiation

• Cosmic Ultraviolet Background Radiation

• Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

• Cosmic X-ray Background Radiation

Who proposed the idea in the 3rd century BC that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than vice versa?

• Aristarchus of Samos

• Hipparchus

• Ptolemy

• Eratosthenes