Stupendous Scale
The average distance from the Earth to the Sun, approximately 149,600,000 kilometers
What is the Astronomical Unit?
A scientist who had a medieval castle on an island to do astronomy and chemistry in
A collection of star charts
What is a star atlas?
Smashing two small atoms, often Hydrogen
What is nuclear fusion?
The region between Mars and Jupiter where most asteroids live
The age of the universe
What is 13.8 billion years?
A system of measuring the brightness of stars where the brighter stars have a smaller value assigned to them
What is the magnitude system?
A key tool when using a star chart
What is a compass?
Splitting a big atom, often Uranium or Plutonium
What is nuclear fission?
Small rocky bodies that burn up in the atmosphere causing a bright streak; a colloquial name for a meteor
The cosmic speed limit, approximately 300 million meters per second
What is the speed of light?
A unit for brightness that refers to the reflectivity of objects, used to describe objects that don't produce their own light like the moon and pavement
What is albedo?
A constellation that will be visible tonight
Cygnus, Scorpius, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Lyra, Aquila, Boötes, Hercules, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius, Virgo, Corona Borealis, etc.
The end of life for the biggest stars
What is a black hole?
The name of a small rocky body that makes impact with the Earth's surface
What is a meteorite?
What is the observable universe?
A system where each tick up or down the scale increases or decreases the value by a different number than 1. The H-R diagram uses factors of 10, for example.
What is a logarithmic scale?
The location of the first star map
What is the tomb of Senenmut?
Where stars spend most of their lives
What is the main sequence?
The theorized sphere of comets and other icy bodies that marks the edge of our solar system
Famously misused in Star Wars: A New Hope, the distance from the Earth to a star that has a parallax angle of 1 arcsecond (1/3600th of a degree)
What is a parsec?
Two factors that affect a star's brightness
What is how hot it is, how big it is, how far away it is, light pollution, and atmospheric interference?
Largest star atlas ever produced
Uranographia of J. E. Bode (1801)
An element that does not make energy from being split or smashed
Iron (Fe)
The name of an asteroid that has an orbit that is completely interior to Venus's; a subclass of the Atira near Earth asteroids