Solar System Flashcards
what is the Orbital Direction viewed from above the North Pole of Earth?
anticlockwise
what are the solar planets?
- Mercury
- Venus
- Earth
- Mars
- Asteroids
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Uranus
- Neptune
- Pluto
How many solar planets are there?
10
what do planets orbit around?
the Sun
what orbits around planets?
Moons
what are Inferior planets?
those nearer to Sun than Earth
what are Superior planets?
those further away from the Sun
what is the Sidereal Period of a planet?
the time taken for 1 orbit of the Sun with respect to a fixed point in space
what does Aphelion mean?
when a planet is furthest from the Sun
what does Perihelion mean?
when a planet is closest to the Sun
what does Eccentricity describe?
the deviation of the orbit from a circle
what is Kepler’s 1st Law?
the orbit of a body is an ellipse with the parent body at one focus
what is Kepler’s 2nd Law?
the radius vector between an orbiting body and parent body sweeps out equal areas in equal times (A1 = A2)
what is Kepler’s 3rd Law?
the square of the sidereal period of a body making one complete revolution of its orbit is proportional to the cube of its distance from the parent body
what do Kepler’s Laws apply to?
artificial satellites
what causes Earth to rotate on its axis?
day and night
what angle is Earth’s axis inclined to the plane of its orbits by?
66*33’
what does the inclination of the axis to the plane of the orbit cause?
day length to vary with Latitude, and through the year
what is the Solstice?
when the Sun’s Declination is maximum
what is the Equinox?
when the Sun’s Declination is zero
how long is the Earth’s Sidereal Period?
365.256 mean solar days
