Astronomy-Basics
The third planet from the sun
What is Earth?
The region of the solar system that starts just beyond the orbit of Neptune and that contains dwarf planets and other small bodies made mostly of ice
What is the Kuiper Belt?
Geology, Oceanography, Meteorology, and Astronomy
What are the 4 main branches if earth science?
Large flat areas of basalt.
What is a mare?
The second tail of the comet that can curve backward along the comets orbit.
What is a dust tail?
The scientific study of the Universe
What is Astronomy
An event in which the shadow of one celestial body falls on another.
What is an eclipse?
... describes how the distance from a planet to the sun is related to the length of time of the planets orbit.
What is Kepler's Law of orbital period?
Rotating clouds of gas and dust from which the sun and planets formed.
What is the solar nebula?
The small objects that filled the solar system 3 billion years ago and caused the moon's surface to look the way it does today?
What is "space junk" asteroids and meteorites that filled the sky?
The moment the sun appears across the celestial equator and provides most of the Earth with 12 hrs of daylight.
What is spring and fall equinox?
A group of visible stars that have a very specific arrangement, typically representing an animal, mythological subject or inanimate object...
What is a constellation?
A collection of stars, dust, and gas connected by gravity.
What is a galaxy?
Degree of elongation of an elliptical orbit.
What is eccentricity?
Areas near the equator do not use daylight savings time, why is this?
What is because they always get the same amount of sun all daylight all year?
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are categorized as what type of planets.
What are gas planets?
Where some scientists think some of the Earth's water came from...
What are comets?
The point at which the sun is as far north or as far south of the equator as possible?
What is solstice?
The distance between the Earth and the sun (150 million Km or approx. 93 million miles).
What is a Astronomical Unit (AU)?
Your friend tells you that he found a meteor in his backyard... What is wrong with this statement?
What is... he should've said meteorite?
Two early models of the solar system described an earth and a sun centered system.
What are Ptolemy's Geocentric and Copernicus's Heliocentric systems?
Where do most comets originate?
What is the Oort Cloud?
The Hubble and Webb.
What are instruments used to observe objects in space?
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are categorized as what type of planets?
What are terrestrial planets?
The inner core is made of Iron and the mantle is made of Magnesium, what can you infer about the relative density of these materials.
What is ... Fe is more dense than Mg?