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WGU SEA4 Astronomy
WGU SEA4 Astronomy Terms
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Astronomical Unit | The average distance from the Earth to the Sun. |
| Light Year | A measure of length that light travels in one year. |
| Jupiter | Largest Planet |
| Saturn | 2nd Largest Planet |
| Uranus | 3rd Largest Planet |
| Neptune | 4th Largest Planet |
| Earth | 5th Largest Planet |
| Venus | 6th Largest Planet |
| Mars | 7th Largest Planet |
| Mercury | 8th Largest Planet |
| Pluto | 9th Largest Planet |
| Mercury | 1st Planet from the Sun |
| Venus | 2nd Planet from the Sun |
| Earth | 3rd Planet from the Sun |
| Mars | 4th Planet from the Sun |
| Jupiter | 5th Planet from the Sun |
| Saturn | 6th Planet from the Sun |
| Uranus | 7th Planet from the Sun |
| Neptune | 8th Planet from the Sun |
| Pluto | 9th Planet from the Sun |
| Distance Mercury from the Sun | 0.39 AU |
| Distance Venus from the Sun | 0.723 AU |
| Distance Earth from the Sun | 1 AU |
| Distance Mars from the Sun | 1.524 AU |
| Distance Jupiter from the Sun | 5.203 AU |
| Distance Saturn from the Sun | 9.539 AU |
| Distance Uranus from the Sun | 19.18 AU |
| Distance Neptune from the Sun | 30.06 AU |
| Distance Pluto from the Sun | 39.53 AU |
| Inferior Planet | Venus |
| Inferior Planet | Mercury |
| Terrestrial Planet | Mercury |
| Terrestrial Planet | Venus |
| Terrestrial Planet | Earth |
| Terrestrial Planet | Mars |
| Jovian Planet | Jupiter |
| Jovian Planet | Saturn |
| Jovian Planet | Uranus |
| Jovian Planet | Neptune |
| Jovian Planet | Gas Giants |
| Outer Planet | Jupiter |
| Outer Planet | Saturn |
| Outer Planet | Uranus |
| Outer Planet | Neptune |
| Outer Planet | Pluto |
| Superior Planet | Mars |
| Superior Planet | Jupiter |
| Superior Planet | Saturn |
| Superior Planet | Uranus |
| Superior Planet | Neptune |
| Superior Planet | Pluto |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | Mercury |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | Venus |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | Jupiter |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | Mars |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | Saturn |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | The Sun |
| 7 Planets of the Ancients | The Moon |
| Pluto | Have to have a telescope to see it |
| Pluto | Discovered in 1930 |
| Neptune | Have to have a telescope to see it |
| Neptune | Discovered in 1846 |
| Uranus | Barely visible to the naked eye |
| Uranus | Discovered in 1781 |
| Kepler's First Law | The path of each planet around the Sun is an ellipse, with the Sun at one focus. The other focus is symmetrically located at the opposite end of the ellipse. |
| Kepler's Second Law | Each planet revolves so that an imaginary line connecting it to the Sun sweeps over equal areas in equal intervals of time. This law of equal areas expresses geometrically the variations in orbital speeds of the planets. |
| Kepler's Third Law | The orbital periods of the planets and their distances to the Sun are proportional. Simply, the orbital period of revolution is measured in Earth years, and the planet’s distance to the Sun is expressed in terms of Earth’s mean distance to the Sun. |
| The Moon | Size |
| The Moon | mass |
| The Moon | volume |
| The Moon | density |
| The Moon | Surface Features |
| The Moon | History |
| Galaxy | A massive system of stars |
| Asteroids | Thousands of small planet-like bodies, ranging in size from a few hundred kilometers to less than a kilometer, whose orbit lies mainly between Mars and Jupiter |
| Comets | A small body that generally revolves about the Sun in an elongated orbit. |
| Meteorite | Any portion of a meteoroid that survives its traverse through the Earth's atmosphere and strikes Earth's surface |
| Meteoroid | Small solid particles that have orbits in the solar system. |
| Meteors | The luminous phenomenon observed when a meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere and burns up |
| Meteors | Shooting Star |
| Black Hole | A massive star that has collapsed to such a small volume that its gravity prevents the escape of all radiation |
| Geocentric | A view that the Earth was the center of the universe |
| Celestial Sphere | An imaginary hollow sphere upon which the ancients believed the stars were hung and carried around the Earth |
| Heliocentric | A view that the Sun was the center of our Solar System |
| Ptolemaic System | A geocentric view of the solar system |
| Retrograde Motion | The apparent westward motion of the planets with respect to the stars. |
| Constellation | An apparent group of stars originally named for mythical characters. The sky is presently divided into 88 constellations. |
| Equatorial System | A method of locating stellar objects much like the coordinate system used on Earth's surface. |
| Declination | The angular distance north or south of the celestial equator denoting the position of a celestial body |
| Right Ascension | An angular distance measured eastward along the celestial equator from the vernal equinox. |
| Rotation | The spinning of a body, such as Earth, about its axis. |
| Revolution | The motion of one body about another, as Earth about the Sun. |
| Precession | A slow motion of Earth's axis that traces out a cone over the period of 26,000 years. |
| Mean Solar Day | The average time between two passages of the Sun across the local celestial meridian |
| Sidereal Day | The period of Earth's rotation with respect to the stars |
| Sidereal Month | A time period based on the revolution of the Moon around Earth with respect to the stars |
| Perihelion | The point in the orbit of a planet where it is closest to the Sun |
| Aphelion | The place in the orbit of a planet where the planet is the farthest away from the Sun |
| Ecliptic | The yearly path of the Sun plotted against the background of stars. |
| Plane of the Ecliptic | The imaginary plane that connects Earth's orbit with the celestial plane. |
| Phases of the Moon | The progression of changes in the Moon's appearance during the month. |
| Synodic Month | The period of revolution of the Moon with respect to the Sun, or its circle of phases |
| Solar Eclipse | An eclipse of the Sun |
| Lunar Eclipse | An eclipse of the Moon |
| Terrestrial Planets | Any of the Earth-like planets, including Mercury, Venus, Mars & Earth |
| Jovian Planets | The Jupiter-like planets, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These planets have rather low densities. |
| Outer Planets | Jovian Planets |
| Inner Planets | Terrestrial Planets |
| Escape Velocity | The initial velocity an object needs to escape from the surface of a celestial body. |
| Terrae | The extensively cratered high land areas of the Moon. |
| Lunar Highlands | The extensively cratered high lands of the Moon. |
| Maria | The latin name for the smooth areas of the Moon formerly thought to be seas. |
| Lunar Regolith | A thin, gray layer on the surface of the Moon, consisting of loosely compacted, fragmented material believed to have been formed by repeated meteoritic impacts. |
| Asteroids | Thousands of small planetlike bodies, ranging in size from a few kilometers to less than a kilometer, whose orbits lie mainly between those of Mars and Jupiter. |
| Comets | A small body that generally revolves about the Sun in an elongated orbit. |
| Coma | The fuzzy, gaseous component of a comet's head |
| Kuiper Belt | A region outside the orbit of Neptune where most short-period comets are thought to originate |
| Oort Cloud | A spherical shell composed of comets that orbit the Sun at distances greater than 10,000 times the Earth-Sun distance. |
| Meteoroid | Small solid particles that have orbits in the solar system |
| Meteor Showers | Many meteors appearing in the sky caused when Earth intercepts a swarm of meteroritic particles. |
| Meteorites | Any portion of a meteoriod that survives its traverse through Earth's atmosphere and strikes Earth's surface. |
| Hertzsprung - Russell diagram | A plot of stars according to their absolute magnitudes and spectral types. |
| Main - Sequence Stars | A sequence of stars on the H-R diagram, containing the majority of stars, that runs diagonally from the upper left to the lower right. |
| Red Giants | A large, cool star of high luminosity |
| Supergiants | A very large star of high luminosity |
| White Dwarfs | A star that has exhausted most or all of its nuclear fuel and has collapsed to a very small size; believed to be near its final stage of evolution |
| Red Giants | A star occupying the upper right portion of the H-R diagram |
| Electromagnetic Radiation | The transfer of energy (heat) through space by electromagnetic waves |
| Photons | A discrete amount of electromagnetic energy |
| Radiation Pressure | The force exerted by electromagnetic radiation from an object such as the Sun |
| Spectroscopy | The study of spectra |
| Continuous Spectrum | An uninterrupted band of light emitted by an incandescent solid, liquid, or gas under pressure |
| Dark-line Spectrum | A continuous spectrum with dark lines superimposed |
| Absorption Spectrum | A continuous spectrum with dark lines superimposed |
| Dark-line Spectrum | Absorption Spectrum |
| Bright-Line Spectrum | Emission Spectrum |
| Bright-Line Spectrum | The bright lines produced by an incandescent gas under low pressure. |
| Emission Spectrum | The bright lines produced by an incandescent gas under low pressure. |
| Spectroscope | An instrument for directly viewing the spectrum of a light source |
| Doppler Effect | The apparent change in wavelength of radiation caused by the relative motions of the source and the observer. |
| Refracting Telescope | A telescope that employs a lens to bend and concentrate the light from distant objects |
| Objective Lens | In a refracting telescope, the long-focal-length lens that forms an image of the object viewed. The lens closest to the object. |
| Focus (light) | The point where a lens or mirror causes light rays to converge. |
| Focal Length | The distance from the lens to the point where it focuses parallel rays of light. |
| Eyepiece | A short-focal-length lens used to enlarge the image in a telescope. The lens nearest to the eye. |
| Chromatic Aberration | The property of a lens whereby light of different colors is focused at different places. |
| Light-Year | The distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles. |
| Reflecting Telescopes | A telescope that concentrates light from distant object by using a concave mirror. |
| Radio Telescopes | A telescope designed to make observations in radio wavelengths. |
| Radio Interferometer | Two or more radio telescopes that combine their signals to achieve the resolving power of a larger telescope. |
| Photosphere | The region of the Sun that radiates energy to space. The visible surface of the Sun. |
| Granules | The fine structure visible on the solar surface caused by convective cells below. |
| Spicules | A narrow jet of rising material in the solar chromosphere. |
| Corona | The outer, tenuous layer of the solar atmosphere |
| Solar Wind | Subatomic particles ejected at high speed in the solar chromosphere |
| Sunspots | A dark spot on the Sun, which is cool by contrast to the surrounding photosphere |
| Prominences | A concentration of material above the solar surface that appears as a bright archlike structure. |
| Solar Flares | A sudden and tremendous eruption in the solar chromosphere |
| Auroras | A bright display of ever changing light caused by solar radiation interacting with the upper atmosphere in the region of the poles |
| Magnitude | A number given to a celestial object to express its relative brightness |
| Apparent Magnitude | The brightness of a star when viewed from Earth |
| Absolute Magnitude | The apparent brightness of a star if it were viewed from a distance of 10 parsecs (32.6 light years). Used to compare the true brightness of stars. |
| Pulsating Variables | A variable star that pulsates in size and luminosity |
| Eruptive Variables | A star that varies in brightness. |
| Nova | A star that explosively increases in brightness |
| Nebula | A cloud of interstellar gas and or dust |
| Bright Nebula | A cloud of glowing gas excited by ultraviolet radiation from hot stars. |
| Emission Nebula | A gaseous nebula that derives its visible light from the fluorescence of ultraviolet light from a star in or near the nebular |
| Reflection Nebulae | A relatively dense dust cloud in interstellar space that is illuminated by starlight |
| Interstellar Dust | Dust and gases found between stars |
| Dark Nebula | A cloud of interstellar dust that obscures the light of more distant stars and appears as an opaque curtain |
| Protostar | A collapsing cloud of gas and dust destined to become a star. |
| Hydrogen burning | The conversion of hydrogen through fusion to form helium |
| Planetary Nebulae | A shell of incandescent gas expanding from a star |
| Neutron Stars | A star of extremely high density composed entirely of neutrons |
| Pulsar | A variable radio source of small size that emits radio pulse in very regular periods |
| Black Holes | A massive star that has collapsed to such a small volume that its gravity prevents the escape of all radiation |
| Spiral Galaxies | A flattened, rotating galaxy with pinwheel-like arms of interstellar material and younger stars winding out from its nucleus |
| Barred Spiral Galaxies | A galaxy having straight arms extending from its nucleus |
| Elliptical Galaxies | A galaxy that is round or elliptical in outline. It contains little gas and dust, no disk or spiral arms, and few hot, bright stars. |
| Irregular Galaxies | A galaxy that symmetry |
| Galatic Clusters | A system of galaxies containing from several to thousands of member galaxies |
| Local Group | The cluster of 20 or so galaxies to which our galaxy belongs |
| Hubble's Law | Relates the distance to a galaxy and its velocity |
| Big Bang Theory | The theory that proposes that the universe originated as a single mass, which subsequently exploded. |
| Proton-Proton Chain | A chain of thermonuclear reactions by which nuclei of hydrogen are built up into nuclei of helium |
| Johannes Kepler | three laws of planetary motion |
| Nicolaus Copernicus | De Revolutionibus, Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres) |
| Ptolemy | proposed an Earth-centered model of the heavens in A.D. 141 |
| Galileo Galilei | Dialogue of the Great World Systems |
| Tycho Brahe | precise observations of heavenly bodies using pointers in the late 1500s |
| Sir Isaac Newton | mathematical explanation of planetary motion using laws of motion |
| Mars | the red planet |
| Saturn | less dense than water |
| Uranus | rotates "on its side" |
| Jupiter | rotates more rapidly than any other planet |
| Venus | second only to the Moon in brilliance in the night sky |
| Mercury | greatest temperature extremes of any planet |
| Neptune | the "windy" planet with the Great Dark Spot |
| Pluto | most eccentric of all planetary orbits |
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