Space and Astronomy

All 13 questions

Prefer reading to playing? Here is every question of this quiz — answers come with your score.

1. Which planet has the hottest average surface temperature in the solar system?

   • Mercury
   • Mars
   • Jupiter
   • Venus

2. What is the largest moon in the solar system?

   • Ganymede
   • Europa
   • Titan
   • The Moon

3. The Great Red Spot, a giant storm that has raged for centuries, is a feature of which planet?

   • Neptune
   • Saturn
   • Mars
   • Jupiter

4. The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of which two planets?

   • Earth and Mars
   • Mars and Jupiter
   • Jupiter and Saturn
   • Venus and Earth

5. Which planet is tilted so far over, with an axial tilt near 98 degrees, that it essentially rotates on its side?

   • Saturn
   • Mars
   • Uranus
   • Neptune

6. Excluding the Sun, which star is closest to our solar system?

   • Barnard's Star
   • Alpha Centauri A
   • Proxima Centauri
   • Sirius

7. A light-year is a unit that measures which of the following?

   • Time
   • Distance
   • Mass
   • Brightness

8. In 2006, Pluto was reclassified from a planet into which category?

   • Dwarf planet
   • Asteroid
   • Moon
   • Comet

9. A total solar eclipse occurs when which body passes directly between the Earth and the Sun?

   • Venus
   • A comet
   • The Moon
   • Mercury

10. Relative to the size of its planet, Earth's Moon is unusually large compared with the moons of most other planets in the solar system.

    • True
    • False

11. Light from the Sun reaches the Earth in about one second.

    • True
    • False

12. A shooting star streaking across the night sky is actually a small fragment of rock or dust burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, known as a ___.

13. Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, is located on the planet ___.