100 Evergreen MCQ Astronomy Multiple Choice Trivia Questions

Interesting astronomy facts

The sun, as well as everything that circles it, such as the eight (originally nine) planets we all remember from primary school, make up our solar system. But the primary planets are only the beginning, as different and intriguing as they are. Comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, odd moons, and a slew of other weird phenomena that defy explanation are among Earth’s cosmic neighbors.

On Pluto, scientists uncovered ice-spewing volcanoes, while on Mars, a genuinely “grand” canyon the size of the United States has been discovered. Beyond Neptune, there might possibly be a massive, unknown planet waiting. Continue reading to learn about some of the most bizarre facts about the solar system.

1. Titan does have a liquid cycle, but it isn’t water

Titan’s lakes contain methane and ethane, as well as a layer of water. Titan, another strange moon in Saturn’s system, has a liquid “cycle” that transports stuff from the atmosphere to the surface. Titan’s huge lakes are filled with methane and ethane, presumably atop a layer of water, which sounds a lot like Earth’s water cycle.

Researchers seek to deduce some of Titan’s mysteries using data from the multinational Cassini mission before developing a submersible to explore the mystery moon’s depths.

2. The atmosphere of the sun is much hotter than the surface of the sun

The sun’s temperature fluctuates with each layer of the atmosphere. The photosphere of the sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius), whereas the sun’s higher atmosphere reaches temperatures in the millions of degrees. It’s a significant temperature difference with no explanation.

NASA, on the other hand, has many sun-gazing spacecraft on the case and has some theories about how the heat is created. One is “heat bombs,” which occur when magnetic fields in the corona intersect and realign. When plasma waves go from the sun’s surface to the corona, this is another example.

We’re closer than ever to solving the mysteries at the center of our solar system, according to fresh data from the Parker Solar Probe (which recently became the first human-made object to contact the sun).

3. The yin-yang moon of Saturn

Iapetus, Saturn’s moon, has an extremely dark hemisphere that faces away from the planet and a very bright hemisphere that faces Saturn. Most asteroids, moons, and planets have fairly uniform surfaces, but Iapetus occasionally glows brightly enough to be seen by Giovanni Cassini’s telescope in the 1600s and then dims by several magnitudes when seen in the other direction.

According to current research, Iapetus, also known as Saturn VIII, is mostly made of water ice. Scientists believe that when the moon’s darker side confronts the light, water ice sublimated away from that location, leaving darker rock behind. As dark material warms up more than bright, reflecting ice, this might have formed a positive feedback loop: as the darker, warmer side of the moon shed ice, it became simpler to heat up each time it faced the sun, hastening the loss of additional ice.

4. Organic molecules may be found all over the place

Many additional bodies in the solar system, notably Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenk, have been discovered to contain organic compounds. A picture shot by the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft shows the jagged topography of comet 67P/Churyumov-nucleus. Gerasimenk’s

Organics are complex carbon-based substances that may be made by non-biological processes as well as by biological activities. Organic molecules are abundant on Earth, but they may also be found in surprising places around the solar system. Organics, for example, have been discovered on the surface of Comet 67P. The result supported the theory that organic chemicals needed to kick-start life on Earth may have been delivered from space. Organics have also been discovered on Mercury’s surface, Saturn’s moon Titan (which gives Titan its orange hue), and Mars’ surface.

5. Miranda, what happened to her?

The moon of Uranus Miranda’s landscape is one of the most varied among alien bodies. Miranda, a dark moon of Uranus that was only seen briefly by Voyager 2 in 1986, is one of the most strange moons in the solar system. Sharp ridges, craters, and other large disturbances may be seen on Miranda’s surface, which is often the consequence of volcanic activity. That type of surface may be caused by tectonic action, but Miranda is far too tiny to create that much heat on its own.

Uranus’ gravitational pull is thought to have caused the push-pull motion that heated, churned, and contorted Miranda’s surface. However, we’ll need to send another spacecraft to the moon’s unexplored northern hemisphere to be sure.

6. Saturn’s storm is hexagonal in form

A weird hexagonal-shaped storm has been raging for decades in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. A roaring six-sided storm called “the hexagon” may be seen in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. This hexagon, a massive complex storm, has loomed for decades, if not centuries.

The odd storm was detected in the 1980s, but it was scarcely visible until the Cassini spacecraft sailed by in 2004 and 2017. The storm is 180 miles (300 kilometers) tall, 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) broad, and made of air flowing at around 200 mph (320 km/h), according to Cassini images and data.

7. Neptune is overheated

Neptune is around 30 times the distance between the sun and Earth. Because Neptune is nearly 30 times further away from the sun than Earth, it receives far less heat and light. However, when compared to Uranus, it emits significantly more heat than it absorbs and has far more activity in its atmosphere than planetary scientists would expect. Uranus is closer to the sun than Neptune, but it emits roughly the same amount of heat. Scientists aren’t sure why.

Winds on Neptune can reach speeds of up to 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 kilometers per hour). Is it the sun, the planet’s core, or gravitational contraction that’s supplying all that energy? Researchers are attempting to discover the answer.

8. The moon of Jupiter Io is home to massive volcanic outbursts

Hundreds of active volcanoes may be found on Io. During a visit, NASA’s Galileo probe caught an amazing eruption. Jupiter’s moon Io may come as a shock when compared to Earth’s calm moon. The Jovian moon includes hundreds of volcanoes and is the most active moon in the solar system, with sulfur plumes reaching 190 miles (300 kilometers) into its atmosphere. Io’s volcanoes, according to NASA, spew one ton (more than 900 kilograms) of gases and particles into space toward Jupiter every second.

The tremendous forces that Io is subjected to while nestled in Jupiter’s gravitational well and magnetic field generate its eruptive character. As the moon approaches and departs from the planet, its interiors tighten and relax, providing enough energy for volcanic activity.

Scientists are still attempting to figure out how heat travels through Io’s interior, making it impossible to anticipate where volcanoes will be found just based on scientific models.

9. There could be a massive planet at the solar system’s edge

Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet that might explain various Kuiper Belt object motions. Based on mathematical calculations and simulations, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology reported in January 2015 that there might be a huge planet lying far beyond Neptune. Several teams are now searching for this hypothetical “Planet Nine,” with research indicating that it might be discovered within the next decade.

If this huge object exists, it might provide insight into the motions of certain objects in the Kuiper Belt, an icy region beyond Neptune’s orbit. Brown has already detected numerous huge objects in that area, some of which are comparable to or larger than Pluto. (His discoveries were one of the driving forces behind Pluto’s reclassification as a minor planet in 2006.)

However, scientists are also investigating the possibility that “Planet Nine” is a grapefruit-sized black hole that warps space in the same manner that a massive planet would. Another team hypothesizes that the strange motions of the Kuiper Belt’s inhabitants are the result of the combined effect of multiple tiny objects, rather than an undiscovered planet or black hole.

10. The Van Allen belts around Earth are stranger than predicted

In 1958, the Van Allen belts were found. Large bands of radiation encircle Earth, expanding and contracting in response to solar activity. The Van Allen belts are a series of magnetically confined, very energetic charged particles that surround our planet (named after the discoverer of the phenomenon.) While we’ve known about the belts since the dawn of time, the Van Allen Probes (released in 2012) has given us the finest look we’ve ever had of them. Along the journey, they’ve discovered a few surprises.

The belts now extend and constrict in response to solar activity. The belts can be highly distinct from one another at times, while they might grow into one gigantic entity at other times. In 2013, an additional radiation belt (beyond the existing two) was discovered. Scientists can better forecast space weather and solar storms by understanding these bands.

11. The majority of comets are discovered with a sun-gazing telescope

ISON, the comet, appears in the image’s bottom right corner and sweetens up to the top right. The ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory took the spectacular image, which included a sun image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in the middle.

Comets were formerly the domain of amateur astronomers who scoured the skies with telescopes night after night. While some professional observatories made comet discoveries as well, with the launch of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in 1995, things began to change.

Since then, the spacecraft has discovered almost 2,400 comets, which is an impressive side-mission for a telescope designed to study just the sun. “Sungrazers” is a nickname for these comets. Many amateurs continue to look for comets by identifying them from raw SOHO photos. In 2013, SOHO saw the disintegration of the brilliant Comet ISON, which became one of its most renowned sightings.

12. Uranus spins sideways

Uranus looks to be turning on its side as it orbits the sun like a ball. The north pole of Uranus is at 4 o’clock in this composite view of the two hemispheres taken using Keck Telescope adaptive optics.

Uranus is commonly shown in classroom solar system models as a featureless blue ball, but upon closer investigation, this gas giant of the outer solar system is very strange.

According to NASA’s Uranus guide, the planet turns on its side and seems to roll around the sun like a ball. The planet’s unique orientation (approximately 90 degrees sideways relative to the other planets) is most likely due to a cataclysmic collision in the distant past.

The tilt of Uranus creates the solar system’s most intense seasons, according to NASA. The sun shines directly over the planet’s north or south pole for nearly a quarter of each Uranus year (or 21 Earth years, as each Uranus year is 84 years long). On Earth, this implies that half of Uranus never sees the light for more than two decades.

Scientists keep an eye on Uranus’ harsh seasons and predicted that the planet’s equinox in 2007 would bring extraordinary weather. But it wasn’t until seven years later that the atmosphere exploded in violent, unpredictable storms, making Uranus even more perplexing.

13. Rings are far more prevalent than we previously believed

Saturn isn’t the only planet having rings in the solar system. Since the invention of telescopes in the 1600s, we’ve known about Saturn’s rings, but it required spacecraft and more powerful telescopes created in the last 50 years to disclose more. Every planet in the outer solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, has a ring system, as we now know.

However, the rings vary from planet to planet: Saturn’s beautiful halo, which is made up in part of glittering, reflecting water ice, is unique. The other giants’ rings are most likely comprised of stony particles and dust. Planets aren’t the only ones with rings. Astronomers detected rings around the asteroid Chariklo in 2014, for example.

14. Pluto’s atmosphere is strange

When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) away from Pluto, it captured this image. The atmosphere of Pluto is seen as a blue haze.

The atmosphere seen on Pluto defied all expectations. The unexpected haze reached a height of 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), soaring higher above the surface than the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists investigated the haze as data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft came in, and they detected some surprises there as well.

Pluto’s atmosphere has roughly 20 layers that are both colder and denser than predicted, according to scientists. This has an impact on how rapidly Pluto’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere escapes into space. The New Horizons mission discovered that tons of nitrogen gas depart the dwarf planet every hour, yet Pluto manages to replace that lost nitrogen on a regular basis. Geological activity on the dwarf planet is most likely producing more of it.

15. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is dwindling

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is the largest storm in the solar system, but the anticyclonic storm is shrinking, so it won’t be for long. During a flyby in 2019, NASA’s Juno spacecraft acquired this photograph of the famed storm.

Jupiter is the biggest planet in the solar system, and it also contains the solar system’s greatest storm. It’s been known as the Great Red Spot since the 1600s, and it’s been investigated by contemporary sensors like NASA’s Juno, which just revealed that the storm is hundreds of kilometers tall (and likely fed by winds from thousands of miles below, too). For millennia, the storm has been a blazing puzzle, but in recent decades, another mystery has emerged: the location is shrinking.

The storm was barely 10,250 miles (16,500 km) wide in 2014, less than half its historic extent. Professional and amateur telescopes are also monitoring the shrinking. Because viewing time on bigger, professional telescopes are restricted and often split between multiple objects, amateurs are typically able to produce more reliable observations of Jupiter.

16. There is water everywhere throughout

Water ice may be found across the solar system. This artist’s rendering depicts what Mars would look like if it had water lakes.

Water was originally thought to be a scarce commodity in space. Water ice is found everywhere around the solar system, for example, as a component of comets and asteroids.

On Mercury and the moon, water can be found as ice in permanently shaded craters, but we don’t know if there’s enough to support future human colonies. Mars possesses ice at its poles, in the form of frost and most likely beneath the surface dust. Ice may be found on even the smallest worlds in the solar system, such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus and the dwarf planet Ceres.

Europa, Jupiter’s moon, is thought to be the most likely prospect for alien life because contrary to popular belief, there is likely liquid water underneath its broken and frozen surface. Europa, which is far smaller than Earth, may have a deep ocean with twice as much water as all of Earth’s seas combined, according to experts.

However, we are aware that not all ice is created equal. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, for example, saw a different type of water ice than that present on Earth when it examined Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko up close.

17. On Pluto, there are mountains

Because Pluto is such a small world at the fringe of the solar system, astronomers expected it would have a homogeneous, crater-pocked environment. That changed in 2015 when NASA’s New Horizons probe sailed by and returned images that permanently transformed our perception of Pluto.

Ice mountains of 11,000 feet (3,300 meters) in height were discovered, showing that Pluto was geologically active as recently as 100 million years ago. However, geological activity necessitates the presence of energy, and the source of such energy inside Pluto remains unknown. The Sun is too far away from Pluto to create enough heat for geological activity, and there are no massive planets nearby with enough gravity to trigger such a disturbance.

18. Between Earth and our moon, all of the planets in the solar system could fit

All of the planets in the solar system might fit between Earth and its moon, depending on how carefully you perform the calculations and how you arrange them. According to the news site Slate, the distance between the Earth and the moon changes, as does the diameter of each planet – they’re broader at their equators, so Saturn or Jupiter, or both, would have to be turned sideways for this to work. Imagine lining them up in a straight line, pole to pole. They’d squeak in between us and our closest space partner, shutting off the sky with their rings and gas giant size in the process.

Of course, we’d have other issues to deal with in the real world. Even though our little moon currently causes massive tides on Earth, the gravitational disruption caused by our increasing closeness to Jupiter would prevent any of us from savoring the view.

The moon is the farthest we’ve ever sent humans from Earth and depending on how you look at it, it’s both mind-bogglingly far away and very close. Eight massive planets may fit between here and there, but the distance between Earth and the sun is more than 390 times the distance between Earth and the moon, according to NOAA.

To compare distances within the solar system, scientists use an approximation of the Earth-to-sun distance, also known as one astronomical unit or AU. Jupiter is around 5.2 AU from the sun, whereas Neptune is 30.07 AU from the sun, or almost 30 times the distance between Earth and the star.

19. Mercury continues to decline

Mercury is our solar system’s smallest planet. The years are short, the days are long, and the temperatures are harsh.

Mercury is already the smallest and second-densest planet in the solar system (excluding dwarf planet Pluto, of course). It’s just becoming smaller and denser as time goes on.

For so many years, scientists assumed that Earth was the solar system’s sole tectonically active planet. That changed when the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft completed its first orbital mission to Mercury, mapping the whole planet in high resolution and examining its surface properties.

In 2016, MESSENGER data revealed fault scarps, which are cliff-like features. Because the fault scarps are so minuscule, scientists believe they were produced relatively recently and that the planet is still contracting 4.5 billion years after the solar system originated.

20. The Grand Canyon may be eaten for breakfast by Mars’ greatest valley

The Valles Marineris on Mars is more than ten times the length of the Grand Canyon on Earth. Valles Marineris, a massive system of Martian canyons stretching 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers), is more than ten times the length of the Grand Canyon on Earth. Valles Marineris eluded early Mars spacecraft (which flew over other sections of the planet) until it was discovered in 1971 by the global mapping mission Mariner 9. Valles Marineris could run from coast to coast across the United States, and it was a spectacle not to be missed!

The lack of active plate tectonics on Mars makes determining how the canyon was created difficult. Some scientists believe that the Tharsis Ridge, which contains Olympus Mons, a series of volcanoes on the other side of the planet, twisted the crust from the opposite side of Mars. Cracks in the crust were opened, massive volumes of subsurface water emerged to cut away rock, and glaciers crushed new paths into the canyon system as a result of this cataclysmic action.

21. Inhabitable (or inhabited) regions in the solar system might be contaminated by spacecraft

We haven’t discovered any signs of life anywhere else in the solar system. However, as scientists understand more about life in severe settings on Earth, such as hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, new possibilities for finding it on other planets open up.

Scientists have discovered no sign of life beyond the solar system so far. However, as scientists understand more about how “extreme” bacteria exist in undersea volcanic vents or icy conditions, additional choices for where they can live in other worlds become available.

Microbial life on Mars is now thought to be so plausible that scientists are taking extra care to sterilize spacecraft heading to the planet. Rather than risk polluting Europa’s possibly livable waters, NASA opted to crash the Galileo probe into Jupiter.

22. Solar system is enormous in size

In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It was the first human-made object to reach interstellar space by crossing the heliopause, or the edge of the heliosphere, more than three decades later, in 2012. Beyond that point, the majority of the sun’s expelled particles and magnetic fields disappear.
“If we define our solar system as the Sun and everything that principally circles the Sun,” NASA says, “Voyager 1 will remain inside the solar system’s limits until it escapes from the Oort cloud in another 14,000 to 28,000 years.”

23. Every planet has been visited by spacecraft

For more than 60 years, we’ve been exploring space and have been fortunate enough to get close-up images of hundreds of celestial objects. We’ve dispatched probes to all of the planets in our solar system, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, as well as Pluto and Ceres, two minor planets.

The majority of the flybys came from NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, which launched more than four decades ago and are still sending data from interstellar space. Thanks to a fortuitous configuration of the outer planets, the Voyagers were able to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

24. The planet Venus is swept by super-strong winds… which some belief may house life

On its surface, Venus is a hellish planet with a high-temperature, high-pressure atmosphere. It’s bone-dry and hot enough to melt lead, so it’s not exactly a pleasant place to be (and has probably always been inhospitable to life). According to NASA, when Soviet Venera spacecraft landed there in the 1970s, they only survived a few minutes or at most a few hours before melting or being crushed beyond their capacity to operate.

The planet’s environment is strange even above its surface. The planet’s top winds are 50 times quicker than the planet’s rotation, according to scientists. The European Venus Express satellite (which orbited the planet between 2006 and 2014) observed periodic fluctuations in the winds over lengthy periods of time. The hurricane-force winds looked to be becoming stronger over time, according to the report.

Some astrobiologists were ecstatic when a 2020 research discovered phosphine, a probable indicator of decaying living stuff, high in the Venusian clouds. Is it possible that they’re a sign of life? Follow-up research has ruled out the potential of life in Venus’ dry, windy atmosphere if there isn’t enough water.

25. A volcano on Mars is larger than the entire state of Hawaii

The largest volcano yet discovered in the solar system is Olympus Mons. The shield volcano on Mars is seen in this artist’s artwork.

While Mars presently appears to be peaceful, the planet’s surface was formerly dominated by massive volcanoes. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano yet discovered in the solar system, is one of them. The volcano is the size of Arizona, measuring 374 miles (602 kilometers) wide. It stands 16 miles (25 kilometers) tall, or three times the height of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak. According to NASA, Olympus Mons is 100 times the size of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s biggest volcano.

Volcanoes on Mars, scientists believe, may develop to such enormous sizes because the gravity on Mars is considerably lower than on Earth.

Furthermore, unlike the Earth’s crust, the Martian crust is unlikely to migrate (although the debate among researchers continues). Because a hot point in the mantle developed a chain of volcanoes in the crust sailing above it, a volcano on Mars may grow up for longer in one area if the surface isn’t moving.

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