Sky Science Flashcards
What is altitude?
The distance between a heavenly body and the horizon as measured in degrees.
What is annual motion?
The Earth’s orbital motion around the sun every year.
What is Aphelion?
The point in the Earth’s orbit where the Earth is the farthest away from the sun.
What is an asteroid?
A rocky object, found in space orbiting the sun(about 3000 asteroids have been discovered).
What is an asteroid belt?
The area between the inner and the outer planets that is filled with asteroids.
What is Asterism?
Stars that form patterns but are generally smaller than or part of a constellation(ex. The Big Dipper is a asterism and forms part of Ursa Major).
What is a Astronomer?
Someone who studies the stars, planets, and other objects in space.
What is astronomy?
The study of the universe and all the bodies that appear in the skies.
What is an Atmosphere?
A layer of air between the Earth and outer space.
What is an axis?
An imaginary line on which all the planets, including Earth, spin.
What are binary stars?
When two relatively close stars revolve around each other, often appearing as single stars because they are so far away.
What is a black hole?
An intense gravitational field created when a star runs out of fuel and collapses. Nothing not even light can escape its pull.
What is a blue moon?
The second full moon in the same calendar month.
What does it mean to calibrate?
To determine, check or adjust a scale of any measuring instrument.
What is a celestial equator?
An imaginary line in the sky directly above the earth’s equator.
What is a celestial hemisphere?
The heavens surrounding the Earth, split into two parts directly above the earths equator, can be identified as the northern and southern celestial hemispheres.
What is a celestial sphere?
The heavens surrounding the earth.
What is a comet?
A large ball of ice, dust, rock and gas the orbits the Sun, circling the dark edges of the solar system.
What are constellations?
Bright stars grouped according to the patterns they make in the sky(such as Orion and Ursa Major). There are 88 constellations that cover the sky;many of their names coming from characters in ancient mythology.
Who is Copernicus, Nicolaus(1493-1543)?
A polish scientist who was the first to re-introduce the idea originally stated by some radical Greek philosopher 2000 years earlier, that the sun is in the center of the universe.
What is a crater?
A hole created on the surface of an object or body, made by falling meteorites or by erupting volcanoes.
What is a crescent moon?
A moon phase when the moon is less the half lit.
What is an ecliptic?
The apparent great-circle annual path of the Sun, as seen from the Earth. It is called the ecliptic because eclipses occur only when is on or near this path.
What is the equator?
An imaginary circle around the center of the Earth,
perpendicular to the axis of rotation.
What is a Equinox?
During the Sun’s annual path in the sky it crosses the celestial equator at two points- the equinox points on these two days on or around March 21st, September 23rd or every year the day is divided between 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness.
What does it mean to “emit”?
When something makes its own light like the sun.
What is a Galaxy?
A galaxy is a cluster of stars and planets which often has a large star called a sun in the middle. Our galaxy is the Milky Way.