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Exploring the Milky Way: A Galactic Quiz

This quiz tests your knowledge about the Milky Way galaxy, exploring its various titles, characteristics, and discoveries made by astronomers.

#Milky Way #Astronomy #Galaxies #Space #Education

1 Which of the following titles did Milky Way have?

2 What does the following picture show?  The Galactic Plane seen by the ATLASGAL survey, divided into sections.   Photograph of the 'Great Andromeda Nebula' from 1899, later identified as the Andromeda Galaxy.   Location of the starscape in relation to the rest of the galaxy.   Broad infrared view of our Milky Way Galaxy from the Spitzer Space Telescope created from more than 800,000 frames. This is the most detailed infrared picture of our galaxy to date.

3 It is one of billions of galaxies in the ________.

4 Milky Way, Andromeda Galaxy and Local Group are all:

5 Actual proof of the Milky Way consisting of many stars came in 1610 when ________ used a telescope to study the Milky Way and discovered that it was composed of a huge number of faint stars.

6 What does the following picture show?  Observed and extrapolated structure of the spiral arms.   A green and red Perseid meteor streaks across the sky just below the Milky Way in August 2007.   Milky way starscape taken from Paranal.

7 Which of the following labels did Milky Way work with?

8 Milky Way, Large Magellanic Cloud and Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy are all:

9 The Persian astronomer Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973-1048) proposed the Milky Way ________ to be a collection of countless nebulous stars.

10 This calculation is according to a computer model made by Martin Weinberg of the ________.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the Leo IV dwarf galaxy is one of the smallest satellites of the Milky Way.
  • the planetary nebula luminosity function is an accurate standard candle (luminosity measurement) outside Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, despite an average error factor of two for distance estimates to planetary nebulae within this galaxy.
  • the Sołtan argument as outlined in 1982 suggests that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy was once a quasar.
  • the Virgo Stellar Stream is the proposed name for a stream of stars in the constellation of Virgo which are thought to be the remains of a dwarf spheroidal galaxy that is in the process of merging with the Milky Way.
  • the Draco Dwarf spheroidal galaxy is one of the faintest companions of the Milky Way and the most dark matter dominated object known.
  • the Milky Way's galactic halo contains many globular clusters.
  • G1.9+0.3 is the youngest known supernova remnant in the Milky Way.
  • astronomer Ben Gascoigne (pictured) discovered that the Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbours, the Magellanic Clouds, are twice as far away as first thought.
  • pictures by amateur astrophotographer Steve Mandel help to explore faint nebulae of the Milky Way.
  • the globular cluster Terzan 5 (pictured) is likely the core of a disrupted dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way.
  • neocatastrophism is the theory that life-exterminating events such as gamma-ray bursts (pictured) in the Milky Way have stopped the advent of complex life elsewhere in its Galactic Habitable Zone.
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