Solar System Vocab
What is the asteroid belt?
What is concentrated group of rocks that revolves around the Sun between the inner planets and outer planets.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
holds you to the Earth and what holds the solar system together
What are comets?
are large frozen balls of ice and dust. As a comet falls towards the Sun, a long tail appears.
What is a Inner Planet? Name them.
What are planets closest to the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
What planet is no longer a planet? What year did this planet get "demoted?"
Pluto, 2008
Rocky bodies that orbit the sun. The asteroid belt.
What is a shooting star?
The "trail" left behind when a meteor vaporizes through Earth's atmosphere after leaving the Asteroid Belt thus becoming a meteoroid.
What is an Outer Planet? Name them.
What are planets farthest from the Sun: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
If planets are closer to the sun, do they orbit faster or slower? Furthest?
Closer to the sun they speed up
Slows down as it moves away
Because of the size of the sun-- gravity does what to the planets, asteroids, and comets?
The sun is so massive, it's gravity pulls planets, asteroids, and comets to it
What are smaller asteroids that do not stay in their orbit called?
Meteoroids
What is the Solar System?
What is a grouping in space that revolves around the Sun and includes planets, asteroids, meteors, and comets.
What 3 conditions or requirements do you have to meet in order to be a planet?
1. Must orbit a star like the sun
2. Be large enough so that its own gravity pulls it into a spherical shape
3. Have an orbit free of other small objects
TRUE OR FALSE:
When meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere-- they are called meteors.
TRUE
What is the difference between "orbit" and "revolve"???
orbit: path a planet follows as it moves around the Sun
revolve: to circle around the Sun (one revolution around the Sun equals one year).
Planets are in a constant state of what?
Motion
Explain how a asteroid could become a meteorite.
If a asteroid leaves the asteroid belt it's called a meteoroid. If it then enter's Earth's atmosphere it's called a meteor. It then vaporizes in Earth's atmosphere, BUT if it does not and survives and hits earth it's called a meteorite.