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Solar System Vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| satellite | a natural or artificial (man-made) body that revolves around a planet |
| asteroid belt | the region of the solar system that is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and in which most asteroids orbit the sun |
| rotation | the spin of a body on its axis |
| orbit | the path that a body follows as it travels around another body in space |
| revolution | the motion of a body that travels around another body in space; one complete trip along an orbit |
| inertia | an object's resistance to a change in motion |
| astronomical unit | the average distance between the Earth and the sun; approximately 150 million kilometers (symbol-AU) |
| terrestrial planets | one of the highly dense planets nearest the sun; Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars |
| gas giants | a planet that has a deep, massive atmosphere, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune |
| meteor | a streak of light in the sky that forms when a piece of rock from space burns up in Earth's atmosphere (AKA: shooting star) |
| meteorite | a piece of rock or metal from space that strikes Earth's surface |
| elliptical | The planets do not orbit the Sun in perfect circles but rather in ellipses—that is, their orbits are shaped like ovals. |
| meteoroid | rocks made of stone, metal, and dust left behind by asteroids or comets that orbit the sun |
| comet | a body of ice and dust that travels in a long narrow orbit around the sun (AKA...dirty snowball) |
| asteroid | a chunk of rock and metal in space which orbits the Sun. It can be as small as a car or bigger than a large city. |
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jaguarscience
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