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These were questions on the invitationals:
38. What are the 2 coordinates used by astronomers to locate stars on the celestial sphere?
39. Give those 2 coordinates for the Cartwheel Galaxy. (TB #3)

38 I can understand, but 39? are the coordinates for the Cartwheel galaxy special or something? I know we can have a laptop with whatever notes we want, but asking for the right ascension and declension of a galaxy seems overkill and more of memorizing, random useless facts, than testing concepts and understand. What is the likelihood of a question like this on an actual test? I'm paranoid right now and don't want to dive through all the galaxies and their coordinates..

batmankiller wrote:These were questions on the regionals:
38. What are the 2 coordinates used by astronomers to locate stars on the celestial sphere?
39. Give those 2 coordinates for the Cartwheel Galaxy. (TB #3)

38 I can understand, but 39? are the coordinates for the Cartwheel galaxy special or something? I know we can have a laptop with whatever notes we want, but asking for the right ascension and declension of a galaxy seems overkill and more of memorizing, random useless facts, than testing concepts and understand. What is the likelihood of a question like this on an actual test? I'm paranoid right now and don't want to dive through all the galaxies and their coordinates..

I have all that stuff in my notes, cause I guess it's always good to expect the unexpected... Also, it could be because I did Reach for two years and knew all those RA/Dec too...

Was that really on the regional test?

That seems oddly similar to the test I wrote for the RCS invitational , down to the question number and question, and exact wording.

The test we were given gave a lot on the DSO's, I would just make sure you have good reference materials for those. Especially Epsilon Aurigae.

Was it about 25 DSO questions followed by 10 multiple choice followed by 5 short answer/FITB, and 2 math questions?

yeah woops sorry i meant invitationals.. not regionals ... and where did you find the RA/D coordinates for all the DSOs?

Various places on the internets including wikipedia and sites off of google.

Alright.. I'm paranoid so.. yeah
what info should I have about the appropriate galaxies? (aka what do they usually ask about? Here's my list:
constellation
spectral type (i think there's only one star or stars this year)
cooridinates
pictures (lol)
apparent/absolute magnitude (hard to find absolute for all of them)
random facts..

anything else i'm missing?

It really all depends on the type of object you are getting info for...

For galaxies, obviously: type, hubble classification, diameter, nucleus, number of stars, etc.

Whereas for globular clusters, there's a lot less information, although it's similar.

Basically, it's a lot of random facts, that are important.. ANd yes, there's only one star on the list: Epsilon Aurigae. Unless you count the companion to the stellar black hole in M33 X-7

batmankiller wrote:would dark matter/energy be something worth investing time into or no?

Completely