Earth
This word describes the spin of a planet on its axis
Rotation
About how long is it from one new moon to the next?
1 month (29.5 days)
What causes seasons?
Earth's tilted axis
What do waning and waxing mean?
Waning = shrinking
Waxing = growing
The latitude line in the southern hemisphere below which gets at least one day with 24 hours of sunshine in december and one dat with 24 hours of darkness in june
antarctic circle
How many degrees is our axis tilted?
23.5 degrees
When the Sun, Earth, and Moon are all aligned, and the moon casts a shadow on the Earth, what do we call it?
A solar eclipse
What season starts when the axis is tilted so the north pole is tilted away from the sun
winter
What moon phase (full name) would occur after new moon?
The highest in the sky the sun appears to get each day is called that day's ___________.
zenith
The rotation of Earth on its axis causes these.
day and night.
When the moon passes through Earth's shadow, what occurs?
lunar eclipse
Sometimes the moon is furth from earth than other times. The furthest away it gets is called its...
apogee
What phase of the moon is after a full moon?
Waning Gibbous
Halfway between the summer solstice and the winter solstice is this day, when there is about 12 hours of light and dark everywhere on earth!
autumnal equinox
Here in Nebraska, March 21 is usually what astronomically defined day?
spring or vernal equinox
There would be about how many hours between high tide and low tide in a certain location?
6 hours
Except during a lunar eclipse, how much of the moon is lit up?
half
What shape of moon can you ONLY see near dawn and dusk?
crescents
The moon takes the same amount of time to rotate and revolve. We say it is in ___________ rotation.
synchonous
What is the name of the latitude line where the sun is directly overhead on June 21?
Tropic of Cancer
How long does it take for the moon to complete one rotation?
one month (29.5 days)
Why don't we have solar and lunar eclipses every month?
the moon's orbit is tilted off the eclipitic plane 5 degrees, so they aren't perfectly lined up most the time
90 degree angle
Our solar system is pretty much flat (even though the whole things is flying through space!. The flat area our solar system occupies is called the...
ecliptic or ecliptic plane