Q 01/05

What is the name of the Sun's visible surface layer?

A) Chromosphere

B) Corona

C) Photosphere

D) Heliosphere

Answer · why

C) Photosphere

The photosphere is about 5,500°C, yet the corona above it reaches millions of degrees, and why the corona is so much hotter is still unsolved.

Q 02/05

Our Sun is classified as which type of star?

A) White Dwarf

B) Yellow Dwarf

C) Red Giant

D) Blue Giant

Answer · why

B) Yellow Dwarf

Yellow Dwarf is a misnomer: the Sun is actually white, and only looks yellow through Earth's atmosphere.

Q 03/05

What type of galaxy is the Milky Way?

A) Barred Spiral

B) Elliptical

C) Lenticular

D) Irregular

Answer · why

A) Barred Spiral

The Milky Way is a barred spiral, and the Sun takes more than 200 million years to complete one orbit around its centre.

Q 04/05

Which American author said he came in with Halley's Comet and expected to go out with it?

A) Whitman

B) Twain

C) Poe

D) Melville

Answer · why

B) Twain

Mark Twain was born two weeks after the comet's 1835 approach, and he died in 1910, one day after it next swung closest to the Sun.

Q 05/05

In astronomy, what kind of quantity does a 'light-year' measure?

A) Time

B) Distance

C) Speed

D) Brightness

Answer · why

B) Distance

Despite the name, a light-year is a distance: how far light travels in one Julian year of 365.25 days.