1.HINTS ON TAKING "OPEN BOOK AND NOTES" TESTS:
a. Study as if it were a closed book test. You do not have time to look up each answer.
b. Carefully read the Chapter Summary, learn the "New Terms", try to do the Review Questions, and the Discussion Questions. Work as many Problems as you can. Feel free to ask me if you are having problems doing them.
c. Don't forget the index or the glossary. Take another look at: How to succeed in your Astronomy Course that I handed out at the beginning of the semester..
d. Read the test questions carefully!
e. Go through the test once and answer all the questions that you can. Then go back and do the other questions.
f. Mark on the test booklet: cross off obviously wrong answers, work the problems, and show your work. Circle the answer on the test booklet - this is the last resort if you have made a mistake on the answer sheet.
g. Carefully darken in the answer on the answer sheet, do not rip, mutilate, fold, or spindle it.
h. Check your answer sheet. Make sure you have answered all 50 questions.
i. MAKE SURE THAT YOUR NAME IS ON THE ANSWER SHEET AND YOU HAVE PUT IN YOUR FULL UNIVERSITY ID NUMBER-LEFT JUSTIFIED. NOTE THAT BOTH YOUR NAME AND ID # GO ON THE BACK! I will subtract points if this is not done.

BRING A PICTURE ID. I WILL ASK YOU TO PLACE IT ON THE TABLE IN FRONT OF YOU AND I WILL GO AROUND THE CLASS DURING THE EXAM CHECKING EACH ID.
 

1. Appendix A: Units and Astronomical Data
a. Review the SI Units. Look at the material in Tables A-1 and A-2.
b. Review Conversions. Note that if you watch what units you are using then the ones you don't want will cancel out.
c. Review the different types of temperature. I will mostly use the Kelvin scale.
d. Review Powers of 10. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of exponents.
e. Know the prefixes for the metric system. How big is a picometer? A Megameter?

2. Chapter 1. The Scale of the Cosmos
a. Review scientific notation. How do we work with things like 3 x 10³ times 0.00012 and so on.
b. As you read this chapter, make sure that you know the meanings of all the words that are in bold-face type. For example, what is an Astronomical Unit? How big is a light-year? What is a light year?
c. Read the Review Questions - try to do the Problems. This is true for every chapter and so I won't repeat this item.

3. Chapter 2. The Sky
a. What are the constellations? Asterisms? How are stars named in each constellation? What is meant by Alpha Orionis? Beta Orionis? Delta Cephei?
b. How do we measure the brightness of stars? Who invented the magnitude system? How much brighter is a 5th magnitude star than a 10th magnitude star? What is the apparent visual magnitude of the Sun?
c. Remember that a difference of 1 magnitude is a brightness difference of 2.5.
d. Look at the Figures and read the figure captions. Where is Polaris? What is latitude and longitude? What is the latitude and longitude of Tempe? What is the Celestial Sphere, Angular measurement, the horizon? Where is the zenith?
e. What is a circumpolar star? How does the sky appear to change as we move north and south? What is the North Celestial Pole? South Celestial Pole? Celestial Equator?
f. Know degrees, minutes of arc, and seconds of arc. Know why the angular diameter is different from the linear diameter.
g. What causes Precession. Which star is now the Pole Star? What star will be the Pole star in 12,000 years?
h. What is meant by the Ecliptic? Which stars are overhead at midnight through the year? Why do they change during the year?
i. What is the inclination of the Earth's Poles to the ecliptic? What is meant by the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes? The Summer and Winter Solstices?
j. What causes the Seasons? How does the rising and setting points of the Sun change through the year? Where, approximately, does the Sun rise at the Summer and Winter Solstices?
k. What is meant by perihelion? Aphelion? Perigee? Apogee? (Used here but defined until the next chapter.)
l. Remember that the planets move along the ecliptic.
m. Read about the Milankovitch hypothesis. It may be correct.

4. Chapter 6: LIGHT and TELESCOPES
a. What is meant by electromagnetic radiation? What are some of the properties of light?
b. What is meant by the wavelength and frequency of light?
c. What is an Angstrom? I use Angstroms in class not nanometers. What is the velocity of light?
d. What is a photon? What is meant by the wave-particle duality of light?
e. What is the relationship between wavelength, frequency, and energy of light? How does the energy of a photon of light depend on its wavelength? What kind of light is most energetic, least energetic?
f. What are the various parts of the spectrum? Note the definitions of infra-red, ultraviolet, X-ray, Gamma-ray, ..Know the different kinds of light (page 101 Figure 6.2).
g. What is meant by atmospheric windows? Where in the spectrum is the atmosphere transparent, opaque?
h. What are refracting telescopes? Reflection telescopes? How do they differ?
i. What is the objective? Eyepiece?
j. What is the fundamental difficulty with refracting telescopes? (Chromatic Aberration)
k. How does a telescope form an image? Note that the image is upside down. How is the Eye like a telescope? What is the focus of a lens or mirror? What is the focal length of a lens or mirror?
l. What is an achromatic lens? Does it really fix chromatic aberration?
m. What is the objective mirror? What is a newtonian telescope? Cassegrain telescope? Prime Focus? (Look at Figure 6-6)
n. What is an equatorial mounting? How does it differ from an alt-azimuth (altitude-azimuth) mounting? Do any large telescopes have alt-azimuth mounts?
o. Where are the Keck telescopes located? Why on a mountain top?
p. What is the light-gathering power of a telescope? On what does it depend?
q. What is the resolving power of a telescope? On what does it depend? Why is it relatively unimportant for ground based telescopes? What atmospheric effect reduces the resolving power of a telescope? What are some of the advantages of a reflector over a refractor for large astronomical telescopes.
r. Why is magnification unimportant when buying a new telescope for ground based viewing?
s. Active optics means that the shape of the mirror can be changed (slightly) over a few minutes to correct for the atmosphere.
t. What are some of the new large telescopes called? LBT, VLT, ... I showed pictures and discussed them in class.
u. A CCD (charge couple device) is a light sensitive surface divided into a lot of pixels. They are very common. A CCD detector is also used in cam-corders. A spectrograph can separate the wavelengths of light out so we can see all the colors. One instrument for doing this is a prism. Another is a grating. The back of an audio or digital CD is a grating. (Not a good one)
v. Why are radio telescopes so big? A radio interferometer makes a lot of separate radio antennas act as a single antenna improving the resolution. One such observatory is the VLA. Where is it located? Did you see it in the movie "Contact"? We do not listen to the signal from a radio telescope.
w. Where is the Arecibo radio telescope located?
x. We launch satellite observatories to observe in wavelengths blocked by the atmosphere or to observe without worrying about the effects of "seeing."
y. Some of the infra-red satellites were ISO, IRAS, and soon SIRTF. In the UV we had IUE, EUVE, and HST. In the X-ray we have CHANDRA.
z. Read the Summary. Try problems 3, 7 (note that the formula gives D in cm not meters.)