Q 01/05

In the best-known Greek myth, the Milky Way is milk spilled by which goddess as she pushed Zeus's nursing infant son away?

A) Athena

B) Aphrodite

C) Hera

D) Demeter

Answer · why

C) Hera

Hera. The baby was Heracles, and her spilled milk also gave us the word galaxy, from the Greek gala, meaning milk; the Romans carried the image over a...

Q 02/05

What type of galaxy is the Milky Way?

A) Lenticular

B) Elliptical

C) Barred spiral

D) Irregular

Answer · why

C) Barred spiral

Barred spiral. Dust in the disc hides the core from us, so the long bar of old stars across it was only pinned down in 2005, by the Spitzer infrared t...

Q 03/05

Which space telescope, launched in 2021, was built to see the universe's first galaxies in infrared light?

A) Hubble

B) Spitzer

C) Euclid

D) Webb

Answer · why

D) Webb

Webb. It works about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth behind a five-layer sunshield, because its own warmth would otherwise swamp the faint infrared ...

Q 04/05

Most of the mass in a typical galaxy is in what form?

A) Ordinary stars

B) Dark matter

C) Black holes

D) Hot gas

Answer · why

B) Dark matter

Dark matter. In 1933 Fritz Zwicky found the galaxies in one cluster moving far too fast for their visible matter to hold them together, and blamed som...

Q 05/05

What is commonly found at the centre of a galaxy?

A) A giant neutron star

B) A massive white dwarf

C) A stellar nursery

D) A supermassive black hole

Answer · why

D) A supermassive black hole

A supermassive black hole. Astronomers showed the Milky Way has one by tracking stars as they whip around an unseen point at its centre, work that won...