Term | Definition |
rotation | an object that spins on its axis |
revolution | an object that moves around a star |
Sumerians | thought the earth was flat and they acknowledged celestial movement but attributed it to the gods |
Ptolemy | made the geocentric model where the earth is in the center of everything with all other objects revolving around us |
Copernicus | made the heliocentric model where the sun is in the center and earth is just another planet |
ellipse | squished egg |
Galileo | used his newly developed telescope and discovered Jupiter's 4 largest moons |
Tycho Brahe | made accurate observations and records of locations of planets |
Kepler | used Brahe's data along with his own to show that planets move in ellipses |
Core (sun) | the central area of the sun where nuclear fusion takes place |
radiation zone | very tightly packed region-plasma phase- of the sun where energy is transferred mainly in the form of light |
convection zone | outermost layer of the sun's interior that moves heat towards the surface in a current |
photosphere | visible surface of the sun |
chromosphere | usually not visible due to light of the photosphere |
corona | outermost part of sun's atmosphere/ visible as halo of light during eclipse |
sunspot | dark areas on the surface of the sun that appear to be burnt out and they always travel in pairs |
solar prominence | a loop of plasma coming off the surface of the sun gets pulled back in by gravity |
solar flare | a column of plasma coming from the surface of the sun near a sunspot |
solar wind | steady stream of electrically charged particles/ where ions enter at the earths poles and the ions change into light which is known as an aurora |
solar radiation | any form of electromagnetic radiation coming off the sun |
terrestrial | rocky surface with metal core, magnetic field, and atmospheres |
greenhouse effect | phenomena where heat enters clouds and gets trapped |
Io | most volcanic |
Ganymede | largest moon in solar system |
Europa | moon that may have life |
Bode | predicted that there were planets after mars |
Piazzi | discovered Ceres |
Ceres | largest asteroid |
meteoroids | bodies of rock and metal that travel through our solar system |
meteor | a meteoroid that enters earths atmosphere and is destroyed by friction |
meteorite | a rare occasion when the meteor hits earths surface |
comets | dirty snowballs |
Oort cloud | "comet nursery" beyond the edges of Pluto/ cold( made of dust, rock, and ice) |
nuclei | frozen mass at the center of a comet |
coma | outer edges of slush when heat hits the nuclei |
tail | formed when the solar wind pushes the coma away from the nuclei |
Goldilocks Conditions | conditions that are optimal to human life |
Probe | unmanned space explorer |
shuttle | manned space explorer |
nuclear fusion | small mass nuclei smash together to form large mass nuclei |