astronomers and stars Flashcards
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and astrologer who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises,
Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center.
Brahe
Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer, known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical observations.
Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and natural philosopher.
galileo
Galileo pioneered the use of the telescope for observing the night sky. His discoveries undermined traditional ideas about a perfect and unchanging cosmos with the Earth at its center.
isaac newton
Isaac Newton (1642–1727) is best known for having invented the calculus in the mid to late 1660s (most of a decade before Leibniz did so independently, and ultimately more influentially) and for having formulated the theory of universal gravity
Edwin Hubble
Edwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology.
Ursa major
Ursa Major is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory
Orion
Orion is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous and recognizable constellations in the night sky
canis major
Canis Major is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. In the second century, it was included in Ptolemy’s 48 constellations
Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky named after the vain queen Cassiopeia, mother of Andromeda, in Greek mythology, who boasted about her unrivaled beauty
red giant
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass in a late phase of stellar evolution
white dwarf
A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter.
main-sequence star
In astronomy, the main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness
supernova
A supernova is a powerful and luminous stellar explosion.
black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it
parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines.
light year
The light-year, alternatively spelled lightyear, is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers or 5.88 trillion miles.
polaris
Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star
ursa minor
Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Bear, is a constellation in the Northern Sky. Like the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may also be seen as the handle of a ladle, hence the North American name, Little Dipper: seven stars with four in its bowl like its partner the Big Dipper.
