Lesson 1
True or false:
The sun is the largest star.
What is false?
The sun is not the largest star; it is a medium-sized star.
the smallest planet
What is Mercury?
coldest planet
What is Neptune?
A huge ball of gases that makes its own heat and light
What is a star?
The system consisting of 8 planets and other objects that revolve around the sun
What is a solar system?
2 factors that affect the brightness of stars
What are distance and temperature?
2 inner planets without moons
What are Mercury and Venus?
separates inner planets from outer planets and is made of many asteroids
What is the asteroid belt?
Small, rocky planets that orbit closest to the sun including Mercury, Venus, Earth, & Mars
What are the inner planets?
Any of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, whose orbits lie beyond the asteroid belt.
What are the outer planets?
3 layers of the sun's atmosphere
What are the photosphere, chromosphere, and corona?
planet with a rusty surface
What is Mars?
4 outer planets in order
What are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune?
the path that a body follows as it travels around another body in space
What is an orbit?
large body of matter that travels around the sun
What is a planet?
closest stars to the solar system
What is the Alpha Centauri Star system?
the amount of time that it takes a planet to orbit the sun depends on
What is the planet's distance from the sun?
3 characteristics of all outer planets
They are all larger than the inner planets, made mostly of gas, many moons, and they all have rings.
The star in the center of our solar system around which Earth and other planets revolve.
What is the sun?
A natural satellite made of rock and ice that orbits a planet
What is a moon?
NASA's Kepler recently discovered several planets that share similar characteristics to Earth. Name at least 2 ways that they're similar to Earth.
What are they are the same size, they orbit a star, and the distance between them and their star is similar to the distance between Earth and the sun.
3 characteristics of all inner planets
-all orbit the sun, have solid, rocky surfaces, have atmospheres, and are smaller than the outer planets
Compare and contrast comets and asteroids.
They are both made of gas and dust and orbit the sun. However, asteroids are mostly located in the asteroid belt, but comets are not. Also, asteroids aren't composed of ice and don't have trails like comets.
chunks of rock that measure 1 meter to several kilometers in diameter
What are asteroids?
A ball of frozen dust and rock that has an elliptical orbit around the sun and has a tail that glows
What are comets?