Astronomy Flashcards
Ptolemy
was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology.
Copernicus
was a Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, likely independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.
Brahe, Tycho
was a Danish nobleman, astronomer, and writer known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations. He was born in the then Danish peninsula of Scania.
Kepler, Johannes
was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. Kepler is a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution. He is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy.
Galileo
was an Italian polymath. Known for his work as astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician, Galileo has been called the “father of observational astronomy”, the “father of modern physics”, the “father of the scientific method”, and even the “father of science”.
Newton, Isaac
was an English mathematician, astronomer, theologian, author and physicist who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time, and a key figure in the scientific revolution.
Hubble, Edwin
was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology and is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of all time.
Ursa major
is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name means “greater she-bear”, standing as a reference to and in direct contrast with nearby Ursa Minor, the lesser bear.
Ursa minor
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.
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. It was named after Orion, a hunter in Greek mythology.
Canis major
is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. In the second century, it was included in Ptolemy’s 48 constellations, and is counted among the 88 modern constellations.
Cassiopeia
is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the vain queen Cassiopeia in Greek mythology, who boasted about her unrivalled beauty. Cassiopeia was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today.
Red giant
a very large star of high luminosity and low surface temperature. Red giants are thought to be in a late stage of evolution when no hydrogen remains in the core to fuel nuclear fusion.
White dwarf
a small very dense star that is typically the size of a planet. A white dwarf is formed when a low-mass star has exhausted all its central nuclear fuel and lost its outer layers as a planetary nebula
Main-sequence star
is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appear on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell.
Supernova
a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass.
Black hole
is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole
Parallax
the angular amount of parallax in a particular case, especially that of a star viewed from different points in the earth’s orbit.
Light-year
is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and measures about 9.5 trillion kilometres or 5.9 trillion miles. As defined by the International Astronomical Union, a light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year.
Polaris
designated Alpha Ursae Minoris, commonly the North Star or Pole Star, is the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor. It is very close to the north celestial pole, making it the current northern pole star.
