Know different kinds of light: gamma-rays, X-rays, UV, optical, IR, radio.
Which kinds of light have the shortest wavelength? Which have the highest frequency?
What about optical light? Which have the shortest wavelength? Which have the highest frequency?
How does the energy of the photon relate to its frequency? to its wavelength?
What kinds of telescopes must be built above our atmosphere?
What is the purpose of the objective (primary) lens/mirror in a telescope?
What is the purpose of the eyepiece lens in a telescope?
What is the focal length of a lens? How can one easily measure this for a given lens?
What is chromatic aberration? What kind of telescope shows this? How can it be fixed?
Know Refracting, Newtonian, Prime Focus, Cassegrain, and Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescopes
What is spherical aberration? What causes it? How does one prevent it?
Know: Light Gathering, Resolving Power, Magnification. What part of the telescope defines these?
Why aren't large refracting telescopes used? What technology is used to make the BIGGEST mirrors?
What is a CCD? Why is it better than using photographic film?
What is the important components of a spectrograph? How does it spread out the light?
What are the main parts of a radio telescope? What is the VLA? How does it work?
Why put telescopes in orbit? What are some of the important Gamma and X-ray telescopes? UV? IR?
What are the main components of an atom? Where do these components reside?
Know: Excitation, De-excitation, Ionization, Recombination. What's the ground state? What's an ion?
Why do different elements show different emission lines when excited in a gas tube?
BlackBody Radiation: What kinds of things emit such radiation? What does its spectrum look like?
As you heat a body, what happens to the kind (color or wavelength) of light it emits?
As you heat a body, how does the amount of light it emit change?
If you double the temperature, how does the maximum wavelength change? The power emitted?
What creates a continuous spectrum? an emission-line spectrum? an absorption-line spectrum?
What is the Doppler effect? How is it seen in day-to-day life?
What kind of motion can we detect with the Doppler effect? What can't we?
How is Doppler shift used with emission-line spectra? Why isn't it used with continuum emission?
What are the most abundant elements in the universe? When did the universe form?
Where did all the elements heavier than Helium come from? When did the SolarSystem form?
Know: The nebular theory for solar system formation. What observations support such a theory?
What are extrasolar planets? How many extrasolar systems are known? How are they detected?
Know the stages for forming a planet: condensation of solid dust out of gas,
accretion of dust grains, pulled together by electrostatic forces. formation of planetesimals
Why do larger planetesimals grow faster than smaller ones?
What is the condensation sequence? How does it explain the composition of our solar system?
How big are protoplanets? What do they form from? How do they merge/combine into planets?
Know Homogeneous Evolution theory for Earth formation. What is differentiation?
How is radioactive decay important? How did Earth gets an atmosphere in the Homogeneous Theory?
How does the Inhomogeneous theory differ? How did earth gets its atmosphere in this theory?