The Neighborhood (Solar System Basics)
These "space rocks" are mostly found in a belt between Mars and Jupiter.
What are asteroids?
If Earth were the size of a cherry, this planet would be the size of a basketball.
What is Jupiter?
This instrument uses lenses or mirrors to make distant objects in space appear closer.
What is a telescope?
This is the invisible force of attraction between all objects that have mass.
What is gravity?
This is a massive collection of billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity.
What is a galaxy?
This object sits at the center of our solar system and contains 99.8% of its total mass.
What is the Sun?
This is the measurement scientists use to describe the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
What is an Astronomical Unit (AU)?
These uncrewed vehicles are sent to land on or orbit other planets to collect data.
What are space probes?
These are the two factors that determine how strong the gravitational pull is between two objects.
What are Mass and Distance?
This is the specific name of the galaxy we live in.
What is the Milky Way?
Often called "dirty snowballs," these objects develop tails when they get close to the Sun.
What are comets?
True or False: The distance between planets is much, much larger than the size of the planets themselves.
What is True?
This famous space telescope (since 1990) orbits Earth to get clear pictures without the interference of our atmosphere.
What is the Hubble Telescope?
If you increase the distance between two planets, the gravitational pull between them does this.
What is decreases?
This is the "glue" that holds entire galaxies together and keeps solar systems from flying apart.
What is gravity?
This term describes a natural satellite that orbits a planet.
What is a moon?
This inner planet is the smallest in our solar system, only slightly larger than our Moon.
What is Mercury?
These large "dishes" on Earth are used to listen for radio waves coming from deep space.
What are radio telescopes?
This is why you would weigh less on the Moon than on Earth.
What is the Moon has less mass?
Our solar system is located in one of the "arms" of this type of galaxy.
What is a spiral galaxy?
These are the four "Gas Giants" located in the outer solar system.
What are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune?
A unit of distance, not time, representing the total distance light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days)
What is a light year?
The largest, most powerful infrared space observatory ever built, launched on December 25, 2021. Developed by NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency, it orbits the Sun 1.5 million kilometers from Earth to observe the first galaxies formed over 13.5 billion years ago and study exoplanets.
What is the James Webb Space Telescope?
This is the "shape" of the path that planets take as they orbit the Sun due to gravity.
What is an ellipse or oval?
An invisible, unknown substance that makes up roughly 85% of all matter in the universe. It does not emit, reflect, or absorb light, making it impossible to detect directly. Scientists infer its existence because its gravity holds galaxies together, preventing them from flying apart.
What is dark matter?