40 Solar System Trivia Questions

1. For every two trips around the Sun, how many times does Mercury turn on its axis?

2. Where can water ice survive on Mercury despite the fierce sunlight?

3. Caloris is a huge impact basin on which planet?

4. The droplets in Venus’s clouds contain which acid?

5. Compared with sea level on Earth, surface air pressure on Venus is approximately what?

6. Which technique lets orbiters map the ground through Venus’s thick clouds?

7. Alongside water ice, Mars’s seasonal polar caps contain frozen what?

8. Standing on Mars, you would feel approximately what fraction of Earth’s surface gravity?

9. Deep inside Jupiter, enormous pressure makes which element behave like an electrically conducting metal?

10. On Jupiter, what name is given to the darker cloud bands between the lighter zones?

11. What is the broad gap between Saturn’s bright A and B rings called?

12. Why is Saturn noticeably wider across its equator than from pole to pole?

13. Which astronomer discovered Uranus in 1781?

14. In which year was Neptune identified as a planet through a telescope?

15. What kind of feature is Jupiter's Great Red Spot?

16. Uranus completes one trip around the Sun in about how many Earth years?

17. Beneath Europa’s icy exterior, scientists infer a global layer of what?

18. Which of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons orbits farthest from the planet?

19. What makes Saturn’s moon Iapetus look dramatically two-toned?

20. The densely pitted surface of Saturn’s moon Hyperion resembles which household object?

21. Herschel, an enormous crater relative to its host, marks which Saturnian moon?

22. Miranda, a moon with a striking patchwork of cliffs and ridges, orbits which planet?

23. Besides methane, which hydrocarbon is a major component of Titan’s surface lakes?

24. Which moon generates its own intrinsic magnetic field?

25. Which part of the Sun’s visible surface rotates faster?

26. Which solar atmospheric layer lies above the photosphere and below the corona?

27. The rise and fall in sunspot numbers follows a cycle averaging about how long?

28. What are large structures of relatively cool, dense plasma suspended in the Sun's corona, seen as filaments against its disk, called?

29. What term means the point in an object’s orbit where it comes closest to the Sun?

30. One astronomical unit is approximately the average distance between which two bodies?

31. The plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun defines which reference plane?

32. When an outer planet is at opposition, which body lies roughly between it and the Sun?

33. Who discovered Pluto by comparing photographic plates in 1930?

34. Dysnomia is a moon of which dwarf planet?

35. Which description best matches the dwarf planet Haumea’s overall shape?

36. Which frozen substance has been detected on Makemake’s surface?

37. The proposed Oort Cloud is usually modeled with which overall shape?

38. What do Trojan asteroids do in relation to a planet?

39. Vesta’s surface is notable for which volcanic rock?

40. Which way does an active comet’s ion tail point relative to the Sun?