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Chapter 6
Earth's Solar System
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Earth is at the center and the sun and planets orbit it. | Geocentric |
Earth and other planets revolve around the sun. | Heliocentric |
The movement of one object around another | Revolution |
An oval shape | Ellipse |
Consists of the sun, planets and their moons, asteroids, comets, and meteors | Solar System |
The average distance from the sun to earth. 150,000,000 kilometers | Astronomical Unit |
Must be round, orbit the sun, and have cleared out the region of the solar system in its orbit. | Planet |
An object that orbits the sun and has enough gravity to be spherical, but has not the area of its orbit. | Dwarf Planet |
Every object in the universe attracts every other object | Law of Universal Gravitation |
The tendency to resist a change of motion | Inertia |
An object at rest will stay at rest, an object in motion will stay in motion with a constant speed and direction unless a force acts on it. | Newtons First Law of Motion |
The sun produces an enormous amount of energy in the central region through nuclear fusion | Core |
Hydrogen atoms join to form helium. | Nuclear Fusion |
Region where gas is tightly packed and energy moves in the form of electromagnetic radiation | Radiation Zone |
Outer most layer of the suns interior; hot gases rise from the bottom cool then sink back down. | Convection Zone |
The inner layer of the suns atmosphere; considered to be the suns surface layer and gives off the light | Photosphere |
Gives the sun the reddish color; middle layer of the suns atmosphere | Chromosphere |
The outer layer which looks like a white halo around the sun; you can see this during a total solar eclipse | Corona |
Where the corona extends out in to space it gradually thins out into streams of electrically charged particles. | Solar Winds |
Huge loops of gas usually connecting sunspots | Prominence |
Eruptions of gas on the sun's surface | Solar Flare |
Inner planets that are smaller and dense, and have a rocky surface. | Terrestrial Planet |
Trapping of heat by the atmosphere | Greenhouse Effect |
Outer planets that are larger and more massive than Earth, they do not have a solid surface. | Gas Giant |
A thin disk of small particles of ice and rock | Ring |
Jupiter's largest moons; Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto | Galilean Moons |
The region between Mars and Jupiter that consists mostly of asteroids | Asteroid Belt |
Beyond Neptune's orbit. 100 au. | Kuiper Belt |
Beyond the Kuiper Belt a spherical region of comets. 1000 times the distance of Neptune to earth. | Oort Cloud |
Lose collections of ice and dust with rocky particles, orbits can be very long narrow ellipses. | Comet |
Clouds of gas and dust form a fuzzy outer layer on a comet | Coma |
Solid inner core of a comet | Nucleus |
Small, irregular, rocky objects that orbit the sun; too small to be considered a dwarf planet | Asteroid |
Chunks of rock and metal smaller than asteroids | Meteoroid |
When entering the earth's atmosphere the friction creates a streak in the sky | Meteor |
Meteoroids that pass through earth's atmosphere and are found on earth. | Meteorite |
Dark areas on the sun; much cooler than the surrounding areas. | Sun Spot |