Astronomy Terms
Terms
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- Asteroid
-
often refered to as minor planets
Ceres is the largest - Asteroid belt
- Area between Mars and Jupiter in which most asteroids are found
- Binary star
- Two stars closely orbiting one another
- Blue shift
- motion induced shift in light wavelenth due to object moving closer to the observer
- Cassini Division
- Gap in Saturn's rings
- Chromosphere
- Sun's lower atmosphere
- Coma
- Head of comet
- Chromatic abberation
- Lens focuses different wavelengths of light differently causing blurs
- Corona
- Outer atmosphere of sun just above chromosphere
- Comet
- Composed of ice and dust; in elliptical orbit around sun
- Escape velocity
- Velocity needed to escape an objects gravitational pull
- First man in space
- Yuri Gagarin
- First American in orbit
- John Glenn
- First woman in space
- Valentina Tereshkova
- First American woman in space
- Sally Ride
- First Space walk
- Alexi Leonov
- First American space walk
- Ed White
- First 2 men on Moon
- Armstrong and Aldrin
- Geocentric model
- Earth is center of solar system
- Great Red Spot
- Giant storm on Jupiter
- Heliocentric model
- Sun at center of solar system (Copernicus founded)
- Meteorite
- Metreoid that lands on Earth's surface
- Oort Cloud
- Area that comets originate on the outer edge of the solar system
- Parsec
- 3.3 Light Years
- Penumbra
- Shadow formed by a partial eclipse
- Precession
- Slow change in the direction of the axis of a spinning object
- Pulsar
- Object that emits radiation in the form of rapid pulses due to rapid rotation of the neutron star
- Quasar
- Starlike radio source (aka QSO - quasi stellar object)
- Rotation
- Spinning of a body around an axis
- Siderial day
- The time needed for a star on the celestial sphere to make one complete rotation in the sky
- Sirius
- Brightest star
- Solar Day
- Period of time from which the sun is directly over head until the next time the sun is directly overhead
- Sunspot
- Blemish on the sun's surface thats cooler than the surrounding areas
- Summer Solstice
- Point where the sun is at it's northernmost point above the equator
- Supernova
- Explosive death of a star
- Synchronous orbit
- State when period of rotation is exactly equal to orbital period. The moon is in synchronous orbit and thus presents the same face towards the earth at all times
- Tail
- Component of a comet that streams away from the main body, may be composed of dust or ionized gasses
- Terrestial planet
- Inner 4 planets: outer 5 planets called Jovian planets
- Umbra
- Shadow of total eclipse
- Van Allen belts
- Two doughnut shaped regions of magnetically trapped particles high above the Earth's atmosphere
- Mars's moons
- Phobos and Demios
- Jupiter's moons
-
Io
Europa
Ganymede
Callisto
more - Largest moon in solar system
- Ganymede
- Saturn's moons
-
Titan Mimas
Enceladus Tethys
Dione Rhea
Iapetus more... -
2nd largest moon in solar system
has atmosphere - Titan
- Uranus's moons
-
Miranda
Ariel
Umbriel
Titania
Oberon
More... - Neptune's moons
-
Triton
Proteus
more... - Pluto's moon
- Charon