Standard-candles astronomy/Quiz

Standard-candles astronomy is a lecture about the astronomy techniques for finding and studying standard candles and standard-candle candidates. These are used to estimate distances beyond the capability of trigonometric parallax.

This is a Hubble Space Telescope Image of NGC 4414. Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA).

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Quiz

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1 Which of the following are attributes that make Type Ia supernovae potentially valuable standard candles?

	occur in dusty regions
	present in the old stellar populations of all galaxies
	they have characteristic mottling
	they lack hydrogen lines in their optical spectra
	they lack helium lines in their optical spectra
	have incipient resolution
	during the first month after maximum light they do have a strong absorption feature produced by the red doublet (λ6347, λ6371 Å) of singly ionized silicon

2 True or False, Red clump giants can provide a very precise estimate of the distances to metal-rich Galactic globular clusters and nearby galaxies.

	TRUE
	FALSE

3 Yes or No, Novae possess a number of attributes that make them potentially valuable standard candles.

	Yes
	No

4 Which of the following are attributes that make novae potentially valuable standard candles?

	they have characteristic mottling
	they are luminous
	they are easy to recognize
	have incipient resolution
	found predominantly in elliptical galaxies
	occur in dusty regions
	found predominantly in the bulges of spirals

5 Yes or No, The ideal distance indicator would be a standard candle abundant enough to provide many examples within reach of parallax measurements and sufficiently bright to be seen out to local group galaxies.

	Yes
	No

6 True or False, Outer spiral arms are considerably bluer due to ongoing formation of young, blue stars.

	TRUE
	FALSE

7 Which of the following are associated with using NGC 4414 as a standard candle?

	characteristic mottling
	observed on more than a dozen different occasions over the course of a few months
	images obtained through at least three different color filters
	incipient resolution
	careful brightness measurements of variable stars
	easy to recognize
	large size of the galaxy

8 True or False, Stars whose distances have been accurately determined with trigonometric parallax can be used as standard candles.

	TRUE
	FALSE

9 Yes or No, The Hubble constant (H0) is the ratio of how fast galaxies are moving away from us to their distance from us.

	Yes
	No

10 True or False, In 1977, the distance to Betelgeuse estimated by various standard candles suggested 200 pc, almost universally used in the literature.

	TRUE
	FALSE

Hypotheses

Main resource: Hypotheses

Hypothesis:

1. Standard candles may not be a reasonable way to estimate distances.

See also

• Astronomy/Quiz
• Background astronomy/Quiz
• Radiation astronomy/Quiz
• Theoretical radiation astronomy/Quiz