Assignment task: Please ensure answers are in your own words.
Q1. Explain why we see the Milky Way as a faint band of light stretching across the sky.
Q2. Briefly describe the main parts of our Galaxy.
Q3. Describe the evidence indicating that a black hole may be at the center of our Galaxy.
Q4. What will be the long-term future of our Galaxy?
Q5. Describe the main distinguishing features of spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies.
Q6. Why is Hubble's law considered one of the most important discoveries in the history of astronomy?
Q7. What does it mean to say that the universe is expanding? What is expanding? For example, is your astronomy classroom expanding? Is the solar system? Why or why not?
Q8. What is the evidence that star formation began when the universe was only a few hundred million years old?
Q9. What is the evidence that a large fraction of the matter in the universe is invisible?
Q10. What is dark energy and what evidence do astronomers have that it is an important component of the universe?
Q11. Thinking about the ideas of space and time in Einstein's general theory of relativity, how do we explain the fact that all galaxies outside our Local Group show a redshift?
Q12. Describe the evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.