Show:
Gravity and the Solar System
The Sun
The Terrestrial Planets
The Gas Giant Planets
Small Bodies in the Solar System
100
A force of attraction between objects that is due to their masses and the distances between them.
What is gravity?
100
The outer atmosphere of the sun that extends millions of km into space.
What is the corona?
100
The four small, dense, rocky planets that orbit closest to the sun.
What are the terrestrial planets?
100
Planets that have deep, massive gas atmospheres, which are made up mostly of hydrogen and helium.
What are gas giants?
100
A celestial body that orbits the sun and is round because of its own gravity.
What are dwarf planets?
200
A point in an elliptical orbit where the object is farthest from the sun.
What is aphelion?
200
The process by which two or more low-mass atomic nuclei fuse to form another, heavier nucleus.
What is nuclear fusion?
200
A term used to measure distances in the solar system that is equal to the average distance between the sun and Earth.
What is an astronomical unit?
200
The largest planet that has the shortest period of rotation. It's famous storm has lasted at least 350 years.
What is Jupiter?
200
A region of the solar system that begins just beyond the orbit of Neptune and contains small bodies made mostly of ice.
What is the Kuiper Belt?
300
The inward force that causes an object to move in a circular path.
What is centripetal force?
300
Two different processes by which energy is transferred to the sun's surface.
What is radiation and convection?
300
The planet with a large iron core that has the most extreme temperature range in the solar system.
What is Mercury?
300
A disk of material that circles a planet and consists of orbiting particles.
What is a planetary ring?
300
A small body of ice, rock, and dust that follows a highly elliptical orbit around the sun.
What is a comet?
400
A cloud of dust and gas, from which the solar system formed.
What is the solar nebula?
400
The rotation of a body in which different parts of the body have different periods of rotation.
What is differential rotation?
400
Called Earth's twin, this planet has prograde rotation.
What is Venus?
400
The planet with a methane in its atmosphere that is tilted at 98 degrees for its rotation.
What is Uranus?
400
A spherical region that surrounds the solar system and extends almost halfway to the nearest star.
What is the Oort cloud?
500
The larger bodies from which the planets formed.
What are planetesimals?
500
An explosive release of energy that can extend outward as far as the sun's outer atmosphere.
What is a solar flare?
500
The largest volcano in the solar system which is found on Mars.
What is Olympus Mons?
500
The four moons of Jupiter.
What are Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa?
500
A small, irregularly shaped, rocky object that orbits the sun.
What is an asteroid?