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Ch 23 - Solar System
Ch 23 - Touring our Solar System Vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| terrestrial planet | relatively small and rocky; Earth-like; Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars |
| Jovian planet | huge gas giants; Jupiter-like; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune |
| nebula | a cloud of dust and gas in space |
| planetesimal | irregularly shaped bodes formed from colliding matter |
| dwarf planet | a round object that orbits the sun but has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit |
| asteroid | small rocky bodies that orbit the sun |
| comet | pieces of rocky and metallic materials held together by frozen water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide |
| coma | a small body made of rocky and metallic pieces held together by frozen gases |
| meteoroid | small solid particle that travels through space |
| meteor | meteoroids that enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up |
| meteorite | a meteoroid that actually reaches Earth's surface |