Science Solar System Vocab Words Flashcards
Term describing a model of the universe in which Earth is at the center of the revolving planets and stars…
Geocentric
Term describing a model of the solar system in which Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun…
Heliocentric
An oval shape, which can be elongated and/or nearly circular; the shape of the planet’s orbits…
Ellipse
The system of the sun and the other objects that revolve around it…
Solar System
A unit of distance equal to the average distance between the sun and Earth: about 150 kilometres (93 miles)…
Astronomical unit
An object that orbits a star, is large enough to have become rounded by its own gravity, has cleared the area of its orbit…
Planet
An object that orbits the sun and is spherical, but has not cleared the area of its orbit…
Dwarf Planet
One of the small asteroid-like bodies that formed the building blocks of the planets…
Planetesimal
The name often given to the four inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars…
Terrestrial Planets
The trapping of heat near a planet’s surface by certain gases in the planet’s atmosphere…
Greenhouse Effect
The name often given to the outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune…
Gas Giant
A thin disk of small ice and rock particles surrounding a planet…
Ring
The region of the solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, where many asteroids are found…
Asteroid Belt
A region where many small objects orbit the sun and that stretches from beyond the orbit of Neptune to about 100 times Earth’s distance from the sun…
Kuiper Belt
A spherical region of comets that surrounds the Solar System…
Oort Cloud
