Question: What is the purpose of adaptive optics?

Answer: to eliminate the distorting effects of atmospheric turbulence for telescopes on the ground

Question: True or false: A radio telescope and an optical telescope of the same size have the same angular resolution.

Answer: False

Question: What does better angular resolution mean?

Answer: you can see smaller details

Question: True or false: X rays from astronomical objects can only be detected from telescopes in space.

Answer: True

Question: What is interferometry?

Answer: It is the analysis of interference patterns of light from different telescopes to enable combining the light into one image.

Question: Telescopes operation at this wavelength must be cooled to observe faint astronomical objects

Answer: extreme infrared

Question: The largest effective telescope, created by radio interferometry, is the size of

Answer: the earth.

Question: What do we mean by the diffraction limit of a telescope?

Answer: It is the best angular resolution the telescope could achieve with perfect optical quality and in the absence of atmospheric distortion.

Question: Improving the spectral resolution of a spectrograph comes at the expense of

Answer: increased exposure time

Question: Which of the following is not a good reason to place observatories on remote mountain tops?

Answer: to be able to observe at radio wavelengths