Actually it isn’t arbitrary. The IAU defines 88 non-overlapping regions of the sky to be constellations. It was originally done to help in mapping or locating celestial objects, but there are now a few different ways of specifying celestial locations.
I always remember the number of constellations is equal to the number of piano keys. FWIW
Hey, I got 10/10. This’ll sure impress my teachers!
No seriously, both amateur and profressional astronomers do use constellations. It’s how we know where stuff is. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a lot of astronomers who don’t know how many constellations there are. Some of these I would expect everyone to know, but there are a lot of facts that, simple though they are, not everyone is introduced to. So, I don’t think 4/10 is indicative of anything except not knowing astronomy. 
“Fretful Porpentine, if you ever get a chance to see a total solar eclipse, do it! You’ll really grok what that “apparent size” thing is about. The moon exactly covers the solar disk - and no more. It’s amazing, even though it is just coincidence.”
Not exactly, I have to point out. There is a great degree of variability in the apparent size between the sun and moon due to the eccentricity of both the earth’s orbit around the sun, and the moon’s orbit around the earth. At times, the angular size of the moon is quite smaller than the sun. Do a google search for “annular eclipse” to see tons of examples.
All too often this (“exactly…”) is stated as a literal fact, which results in me often seeing people doing the “Wow, quite a coincidence huh? A mighty mighty suspicious coincidence cough God cough…” when in fact their respective angular sizes change constantly.
Thanks for the information on “apparent size”; I didn’t realize it had a technical meaning. However, the quiz doesn’t actually use the phrase “apparent size” – what it says is “which appears larger?”. It sure sounds to me like they’re asking about perception. (Mine, evidently, is skewed.)
Just so Coldie doesn’t feel too bad, I missed 2. Got the constellation one wrong (exactly because there are 88 piano keys. I figured that they were trying to trick me by using a familiar number, and 12 is not enough (although eight, surprisingly, is)). Also missed the sun/moon apparent size one because I didn’t take time to think about it.
I think my five and seven year old kids would have got most of the other ones correct, though.
Floored one easy question by clicking the wrong button :smack: … like I haven’t known the order of the planets since the late 1960s.
Number of planets? Well, the jury’s still out on Quauor or however it’s spelled, then.
coughGodcough… still a bit of a bloody coincidence that they’re close enough to get for-real total eclipses, yesno? 
Now that’s silly. Everyone KNOWS the Earth revolves around AMERICA! 
Its been classified as a Kpier Belt Object, or KBO, last I heard. Its putting Pluto’s status as a planet into question, since if we class Quauor as a KBO, then, technically, Pluto should be too…
Yes - its an amazing coincidence, don’t ask me how or why, it just is.
And as for evidence for God, er, this could rapidly turn into a GD
D’oh! Looks like I don’t know jack about constellations either. As for the rest of those questions, I would have been able to easily these questions back when I was seven.
Swish! 10/10!
Yay, me!
Ten out of ten. Breezed through the whole quiz in 30 seconds.
Can I be a Bad Astronomer now, too?
10/10. How ya like me now!!!
The quiz was laughably easy, although there were one or two headscratchers due to the poor wording of the questions. In addition to the problems already mentioned by other posters, Question 5–What planet’s orbit takes it farthest from the Sun?–has both Pluto and Neptune as possible answers. Because Pluto’s orbit crosses Neptune’s, they can both be the correct answer, depending on their relative positions.
I missed #2, because I was looking for a choice that said, "Billions and Billions . . . "
9 out of 10. Some of them seemed more situational. I think a waxing moon looks a lot larger than the sun, but that would be a trick of the eye with the night sky, I suppose. I was almost thrown for a loop with the how many stars in the solar system though. Tricky Tricky. Well not really.
I’d say “takes it farthest from the sun” is fairly specific. One or the other may be further away at any given time, but the one that gets farthest away is Pluto.
I was unsure of the 9 or 10 planet question, because I knew there had been some large rocks discovered out there, but chose 9 as it’s the “traditional” answer.
And I flubbed the question about the number of constellations, though I was very close to picking 88. Oh well, my intellect has not been validated by MSN.
I’m of the opinion that everyone should be able to get most of these questions, because everyone should be sufficiently well rounded to know at least a little astronomy. But, I rankle at the fact that I was made to read Thomas Mann in college, so perhaps I’m just a big hypocrite.
10/10. Not that it means anything, since the quiz is fairly simple.
7 out of 10.
I misread the number of stars one, and was thinking they were talking about our galaxy, not solar system. So I answered too many to count.
I thought the moon looked bigger sometimes. Maybe because it’s hard to look directly at the sun and judge the size well. Oh well. I thought about the eclipse thing and figured that meant it was at least the same size or bigger.
And I didn’t know the sun was a middle-size star. I thought it was small.
I’m beneath most of you… 
10 out of 10 here. Thank goodness…
10/10 here. Easiest quiz ever. I just know someone out there got 0/10.
The apparent diameters of the moon and sun are roughly the same, not exactly the same and they both vary continually. In this thread I posted the range of semidiameters of both moon and sun and you can see they oscillate in a wide range