DM168 HIGH IN THE SKY QUIZ

1. Who did a woman in Florida say told her to go on a shooting spree because of the 8 April solar eclipse?

2. What is the name for the row of brilliant points of sunlight shining through valleys on the edge of the moon that are seen for a few seconds just before and after the central phase in an eclipse of the sun?

3. Name the comet that was last seen in Earth’s skies in 1986 and will return in 2061.

4. Which inventor travelled to Wyoming in 1878 as part of the “Draper Expedition” to test his newly invented tasimeter, a device designed to measure the heat of the sun’s corona during an eclipse?

5. In 1997, 39 members of which cult committed mass suicide, believing that the appearance of Comet Halebopp signalled their ascension to a higher plane?

6. Which seafaring people believed that a solar eclipse occurred when the wolf Skoll, which pursued the sun goddess Sol across the sky, caught up with her?

7. In 1954, what crashed through the roof of Elizabeth Hodges’s house in Alabama in the US, bounced off a radio and hit her on the hip while she was sleeping on her couch?

8. The most dramatic collision of an object with Earth took place in Siberia on 30 June 1908 when an asteroid strike exploded, felling 80,000,000 trees. What was the name of the event?

9. True or false? The Hoba meteorite, weighing about 60 tonnes and the largest intact meteorite that has been found on Earth, was discovered on a farm in Namibia.

10. Which astronomer observed a solar eclipse in 1919, providing evidence for Einstein’s theory

of general relativity?