Bruce Betts' Online College Intro Astronomy Course 2015 Certificate Quiz
 

To get a Certificate of Achievement for taking the 2015 Bruce Betts Introduction to Planetary Science and Astronomy class, a Random Space Fact (RSF) is given in each class designed to be "the" RSF that users will have to recognize later to get the certificate. After all the classes are done, we at The Planetary Society will have an online multiple choice quiz accessible from the class page http://planetary.org/bettsclass. Note: even the "incorrect" choices will be valid scientific facts, just not those identified in the classes.
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Lecture 1: Tour of the Solar System
Lightning twice struck the Saturn V rocket carrying Apollo 12.
12 people have walked on the surface of the Moon.
1000 Earths could fit inside Jupiter and about 1000 Jupiters could fit inside the Sun.
The sun is about 440000 times brighter than the full moon and the full moon is more than 30000 times brighter than the brightest star.
 
Lecture 2: How We Explore Space
The International Space Station covers an area approximately equal to the area of a football field.
The wavelength of light equals the speed of light divided by the frequency of that light.
Radar has been used to penetrate the atmospheres of cloud covered planetary bodies including Venus and Titan.
The International Space Station is visible in the night sky if you look at the right time, looking like a very bright star moving across the sky.
 
Lecture 3: Telescopes, The Moon
The highlands of the Moon are generally older than the mare.
The surface area of the Moon is approximately equal to the surface area of Africa.
The Moon is gradually getting farther away from the Earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope primary mirror is 2.4 meters in diameter.
 
Lecture 4: Mercury, Triad Planets, Venus
Mercury is in a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance.
We have images from four locations on the surface of Venus. (USSR's Venera 9, 10, 13, 14)
Venus has the slowest rotation rate of any planet in the solar system. Venus also rotates retrograde, which means the Sun rises in the west.
The surface pressure on Venus is approximately equal to the surface pressure 1 km (about 3000 feet) under the surface of the Earth's ocean.
 
Lecture 5: Venus (cont.) and Mars
Mars' moon Phobos orbits Mars in < 8 hours, so completes 3 orbits in one Mars day, and rises in the west and sets in the east.
Mars' seasonal polar caps are made primarily of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice).
As of March 4, 2015, there were 7 spacecraft working at Mars.
The Mars atmosphere is made primarily of carbon dioxide.
 
Lecture 6: Mars (cont.) and Asteroids (general)
There are resonance gaps in the asteroid belt called Kirkwood gaps.
As seen from the surface of Mars, Phobos rises in the West and sets in the East.
All Mars rovers have had six wheels.
The largest asteroid by far is 1 Ceres. It is 933 km in diameter and contains about 25% of the mass of all the other asteroids combined.
 
Lecture 7: Asteroid Threat and the Jupiter System
Most scientists believe the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70% of the species on Earth was triggered by an asteroid impact.
Ceres has more than 25% of the mass of the asteroid belt.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a giant storm that has persisted for at least hundreds of years.
Jupiter has both lightning and aurorae.
 
Lecture 8: Jupiter's Moons and the Saturn System
Saturn is the most oblate (flattened) planet in our solar system. Its spin causes it to be 10% "fatter" measured at the equator compared to measured at the poles.
Jupiter's four largest moons are named the Galilean Satellites after their discoverer: Galileo.
We have observed hexagonal cloud features at the poles of Saturn.
Saturn's average density is less than the density of liquid water.
 
Lecture 9: Titan (cont.), Uranus System, Neptune System
Titan's atmospheric surface pressure is about 1.5 times that of Earth.
Triton is the only large Moon in the solar system to orbit retrograde, the opposite direction of Neptune's rotation.
The blue color of the Uranian and Neptunian atmospheres is primarily caused by methane.
All 4 giant planets in our Solar System have ring systems.
 
Lecture 10: Transneptunian Objects including Pluto, Eris, Comets, Oort Cloud plus the Heliosphere
Transneptunian objects are very large, a few are larger than Ceres, the biggest asteroid, and many are larger than Pallas and Vesta the second and third largest asteroids.
Tidal effects that Pluto and Charon exert on each other have locked the two bodies into mutual spin-orbit resonance, meaning that one face of Charon always looks at Pluto while one face of Pluto always looks at Charon.
New Horizons left Earth at a higher speed than any other spacecraft.
Five spacecraft on trajectories to leave the solar system: Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, and New Horizons.
 
Lecture 11: Exoplanets and Solar System Formation
The Kepler spacecraft repeatedly observed approximately 150,000 stars in the constellation Cygnus.
Most exoplanets have been discovered either using the radial velocity method or the transit method.
More exoplanets were confirmed in 2014 than in all preceding years combined.
The radial velocity technique uses Doppler shifts to observe the wobble of a star caused by one or more planets.
 
Lecture 12: The Sun and Stars
The gravity at the surface of a neutron star is more than 100 billion times the gravity at the surface of the Earth.
The Sun has the mass equivalent to approximately 333,000 Earths.
The star Betelgeuse in Orion is bigger than the size of Mars' orbit, and possibly as large as Jupiter's.
The Earth Moon system (384,000) would easily fit within the diameter of the Sun (1.4 million km).
 
Lecture 13: Galaxies, the Universe, Life
NOTE: because the certificate RSF was not clear for this lecture, only the correct choice is listed below. Just check this answer.
The age of the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old (time since the Big Bang).