Topic 8 Lesson 3 Stars and Galaxies

Nadia is writing a science fiction short story for her school newspaper. Her story is about traveling through space to different galaxies. To make her story as realistic as possible, she uses scientific terms. She knows that scientists use the parallax effect in their calculations, but how would she explain parallax in her story? Choose the two that apply.

• It is the apparent motion of an object against distant background stars.

• It is best used to measure the distances to nearby stars.

• It is best used to measure distances to extremely far-away stars.

• It determines distances from only one side of Earth's orbit around the sun

Match each description in the right column with its correct galaxy name.

Groups:

(a) Irregular Galaxies

,

(b) Quasars

,

(c) Elliptical Galaxies

,

(d) Spiral Galaxies

• Do not have regular shapes

• pinwheel arms around a bulge in the middle

• active, young galaxies with black holes at their centers

• rounded but may be elongated and slightly flattened

Tamako knows that objects in our solar system revolve around one star called the sun. She was surprised to learn that there are star systems that have two stars. Help her to recall the name of this type of star system.

• open cluster

• spiral

• binary

• irregular

A ______ is a group of single stars, star systems, star clusters, dust, and gas bound together by gravity.

Tags

NGSS.MS-ESS1-2

Often one star in a binary system is much ________ and more massive than the other.

(a)  

• brighter
• dimmer

• smaller

What are star that formed at about the same time and belong to larger groupings?

• blobs

• group

• clusters

• chunks

Jasmine sees a diagram showing a small star in front of a large star while studying at the library. The librarian explains that some star systems have two stars. When the small, dim star passes in front of the larger and brighter star, it blocks some of the brightness of the larger star. What is the name of the star system?

• eclipsing binary

• quasar

• globular cluster

• comet

Globular clusters are large groupings of ​ (a)   stars. They are round and may have more than a million stars.

• older
• newer

Match the images to the correct galaxy.

Groups:

(a) Spiral Galaxies

,

(b) Elliptical Galaxies

,

(c) Irregular Galaxies

,

(d) Quasars

• 
• 
• 
• 

When determining the distance to nearby stars and other objects, astronomers measure the object's apparent ____________ in the sky as Earth is on opposite sides of its orbit around the sun.

• mass

• orbit

• motion

• gravity