FREE WEBSITE COMPETITIONS, FREE QUIZ QUESTIONS ON STARS

1. If the Star of Bethlehem is considered as possibly a real phenomenon, which planet, known in Judaic tradition as the King's Star and otherwise as a symbol of kingship, is considered to have been at least partly responsible?
   Jupiter was in conjunction twice with Saturn twice in 7BC
   
   
2. The biblical star was used by the magi as a guiding star or lodestar. Which star is traditionally used in the northern hemisphere as a lodestar in navigation and astronomy?
   The North star, Polaris (not visible from southern hemisphere save in elevated positions near the equator)
   
   
3. Which figure in the Christmas story is also known as stella maris, the star of the sea?
   Mary mother of Jesus (maybe through a misconception of the relationship between Mary and maris?
   )
   
   
4. Who used the first star on the left as a lodestar before continuing straight on till morning?
   Peter Pan (and anyone else in the book flying to Neverland)
   
   
5. Whose motto is Per ardua ad astra, Through Struggles to the Stars?
   The RAF, probably since 1912 and the formation of the Royal Flying Corps
   
   
6. Which Poet Laureate wrote: I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by?
   John Masefield in Sea-Fever
   
   
7. Which European monarch was and is popularly named after a star?
   Louis XIV, le roi Soleil - The Sun King
   
   
8. Who had a number 1 hit in the US in 1958 with the song Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, / Save it for a rainy day...?
   Perry Como
   
   
9. Christianity has no monopoly on the star symbol. Several nations in the world use a single star positioned between the horns of a crescent moon in their flags. Which flag has these symbols in white against an all-red (and I stress all-red) background?
   Turkey, although a secular republic. Tunisia has the symbols in red inside a white circle at the centre of a brighter red ground. Pakistan and Algeria have white symbols but a green or green-white ground
   
   
10. Which artist painted a number of startling starry night skies of which the first in September 1888 shows a café terrace in a town centre square?
    Van Gogh - Café Terrace at Night in the Place du Forum, Arles
    
    
11. Which Poet Laureate writes: Sunset and evening star, / And one clear call for me! / And may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea?
    (Please note - it is NOT no moaning AT the bar). Tennyson - Crossing the Bar
    
    
12. Two characters speak the following in Shakespeare. Please name either.
    A) Thou rememb'rest / Since once I sat upon a promontory, / And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, /Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, / That the rude sea grew civil at her song, / And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, / To hear the sea maid's music. B) I remember. / A) That very time I saw, but thou coulds't not, / Flying between the cold moon and the earth, / Cupid all armed.
    Oberon and Puck, Midsummer Night's Dream Act II, scene I, identifying the location of the magical flower love-in-idleness