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Astronomy
Final Exam Vocab
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Astronomy | The study of the moon, stars, and other objects in space |
| Axis | An imaginary line that passes through Earth's center and the North and South poles, about which Earth rotates |
| Rotation | The spinning motion of a planet on its axis |
| Revolution | The movement of an object around another object |
| Orbit | The path of an object as it revolves around another object in space |
| Calendar | A system of organizing time that defines the beginning, length, and divisions of a year |
| Solstice | The two days of the year on which the sun reaches its greatest distance north or south of the equator |
| Equinox | The two days of the year on which neither hemisphere is tilted toward or away from the sun |
| Force | A push or pull exerted on an object |
| Gravity | The attractive force between objects; its strength depends on their masses and the distance between them |
| Mass | The amount of matter in an object |
| Weight | The force of gravity on an object |
| Inertia | The tendency of an object to resist a change in motion |
| Newton's First Law of Motion | The scientific law that states that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion with a constant speed and direction unless acted on by a force |
| Law of universal gravitation | The scientific law that states that every object in the universe attracts every other object |
| Phases | One of the different apparent shapes of the moon as seen by Earth |
| Gibbous | The phase of the moon right before and after a full moon |
| Waning | Shrinking phases of the moon |
| Waxing | Growing phases of the moon |
| Crescent | The phase of the moon right before and after a new moon |
| New moon | The sunlit side of the moon faces away from Earth |
| Full moon | The entire sunlit side faces towards Earth |
| Eclipses | The partial or total blocking of one object in space by another |
| Umbra | The darkest part of a shadow |
| Penumbra | The part of a shadow surrounding the darkest part |
| Neap Tide | The tide with the least difference between consecutive low and high tides |
| High Tide | A tide opposite another high tide |
| Spring Tide | The tide with the greatest difference between consecutive high and low tides |
| Low Tide | A tide opposite another low tide |
| Tide | The periodic rise and fall of the level of water in the ocean |
| Lunar eclipse | The blocking of sunlight to the moon that occurs when Earth is directly between the sun and the moon |
| Solar Eclipse | The blocking of sunlight to Earth that occurs when the moon is directly between the Sun and Earth |
| 27.3 days | The length of time it takes the moon to make one full revolution around Earth |
| 29.5 days | The amount of time it takes the moon to complete all of its phases |
| total vs. partial eclipse | A total eclipse is what you would see in the umbra while a partial eclipse is what you would see in the penumbra |
| Maria | Dark, flat areas on the Moon's surface formed from huge ancient lava flows |
| Telescope | A device built to observe distant objects by making them appear closer |
| Meteoroids | Chunks of rock or dust in space |
| Craters | A large round pit caused by the impact of a meteoroid |
| Rocket | A device that expels gas in one direction to move in the opposite direction |
| Velocity | Speed in a given direction |
| Escape Velocity | The velocity an object must reach to fly beyond a planet's or moon's gravitational pull |
| Thrust | The reaction force that propels a rocket forward |
| Orbital Velocity | The velocity a rocket must achieve to establish an orbit around a body in space |
| Apollo | The American effort to land astronauts on the moon |
| John Glenn | The first American to orbit Earth who did so on the Friendship 7 in 1962 |
| Alan Shepherd | The first American in space who did so aboard the Freedom 7 in 1961 a month after Yuri Gagarin |
| Laika | The first living creature sent into space done in 1957 aboard the Sputnik II |
| Sputnik | The first satellite in space put in space by the Soviets in 1957 |
| satellite | An object that revolves around another object in space |
| Yuri Gagarin | The first human in space launched by the Soviets in 1961 aboard Vostok I |
| NASA | The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the United States space program |
| Freedom 7 | Allen Shepard's spacecraft |
| space shuttle | A spacecraft that can carry a crew into space, return to Earth, and then be used again for the same purpose |
| space station | A large artificial satellite on which people can live and work for long periods of time |
| ISS | The International Space Station is the largest space station ever launched and is a collaborative project between 16 countries |
| Mir | A soviet space station put into orbit in the 1980s and stayed in orbit for 15 years before falling to Earth in 2001 |
| space probe | A spacecraft that carries scientific instruments that can collect data, but no human crew |
| Cassini | A space probe put in space in 2004 that is exploring Saturn's moons |
| Galileo | A space probe put in space in 1995 that provided detailed images and data about Jupiter and its moons |
| rover | Small robots that are part of space probes and move around on the surface |
| Discovery | The first space shuttle put in space by the Americans |
| Challenger | A space shuttle destroyed in 1986 |
| Lunar Prospector | A space probe put in space in 1998 that found evidence of water ice and identified other minerals on the moon's surface |
| remote sensing | The collection of information about Earth and other objects in space using satellites or probes |
| space spinoff | An item that has uses on Earth but was originally developed for use in space |
| GPS | Global positioning system that is satellite based |
| microgravity | The condition of experiencing weightlessness in orbit |
| vacuum | A place that is empty of all matter |
| geosynchronous orbit | An orbit in which the satellite orbits Earth at the same rate as Earth rotates and thus stays over the same place all the time |
Created by:
Allison9
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