click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Space Exploration
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Terrestrial | first four planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars |
Jovian | last four planets, gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune |
Comets | icy, rocky bodies with a vapor trail, follow elliptical path |
Asteroids | rocky bodies often found between Mars and Jupiter, follow elliptical path |
meteoroid | iron or rocky bodies with no determined path |
meteor | meteoroid that enters Earth's atmosphere, gives off light and often burns up |
meteorite | meteor that survives and crashes to Earth |
3 main mass parts of spacecraft | 3% machinery, 6% payload, 91% fuel |
GPS | global positioning system |
Reflecting telescope | uses two mirrors to gather and magnify light |
Refracting telescope | uses two lenses to gather and magnify light |
Electromagnetic spectrum | all of the energy released by burning stars |
Radio telescopes | very large, uses computers to gather and decipher info from space, uses interferometry |
The Very Large Array | series of radio telescopes in Mercedes symbol New Mexico. Arms are 61km in length |
space probes | unmanned spacecraft sent with the intention of never coming back to earth |
triangulation | looking at an object in the distance from 2 locations far apart (baseline). Angle of where the object is can calculate the distance from Earth. |
Parallax | measurement of the apparent shift of location of an object from 2 different perspectives |
Spectroscope | determines composition of stars |
Doppler effect | apparent change in frequency in sound and light waves as observer and wave source move towards/away from each other |
Dark bands in spectrum | different stars' elements have dark bands in distinct sequences and thickness in their spectra (elements absorb light differently) |
Blue shift | dark bands shift to blue end of spectrum when a star is approaching earth, wavelengths are compressed |
Red shift | dark bands shift to red end of spectrum when a star is moving away from earth, wavelengths are spread out |