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MCQIntermediateLight, Radiation & Spectroscopy
BAAO — 2018 Astronomy & Astrophysics Challenge
Question 10
'Oumuamua is an elongated interstellar comet. During an observation with a ground-based telescope whilst close to the Sun, the light curve displayed a sinusoidal variation in magnitude as shown below. If the comet is modelled as an ellipsoid with a shortest visible axis of 30 m, use the light curve to determine the approximate size of the longest visible axis. Assume that the major axis lies in the plane along the line of sight.
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Source
Source: British Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad (BAAO), Astronomy & Astrophysics Challenge 2018. Question text, answer-choice text, and answer were transcribed from the official BAAO paper and solutions PDFs; the explanation and metadata are original.