Discuss each question with your team. Be prepared to explain the reasoning behind your team's answers after the quiz.

  1. A binary star is ________
    • A star system consisting of 0 or 1 components
    • A star system consisting of two components
    • A star that formed from two stars that merged
    • A star with two dumbbell-like lobes resulting from high spin
  2. Which best describes an eclipsing binary?
    • A star that, like the Sun, is regularly hidden behind the Moon 
    • A pair of stars whose orbits we see roughly edge-on 
    • A star system with planets that eclipse the star's light 
    • A pair of stars that orbit a common center of mass 
  3. How do we detect eclipsing binaries? 
    • by watching the motion of the individual stars around each other 
    • by looking for blinking stars 
    • by looking for stars with regular changes in brightness 
    • by receiving their radio pulses 
  4. Which is the most common way binary stars form? 
    • from a collapsing molecular cloud 
    • from the merger of two larger stars 
    • when a collapsing star that spins so quickly it splits in two 
    • when two stars pass close enough that they start orbiting each other