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The Solar System

 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Our Solar System

The Sun

Mercury
Venus
Earth
Moon
Mars

Asteroid belt

Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto

Comets
Kuiper Belt
Oort Cloud
Glossary

 

 

 

 

 

Student and Teacher Travel

-Study Abroad

-Student Travel

-Spring Break

-International Schools

-Travel Guides

-Budget Travel

 

GLOSSARY

 

A glossary of words used in this book:

  • Arachnoid: a scientific term for something shaped like a spider.
  • Asteroid: a large rocky object that orbits a star, but is too small to be a planet.
  • Astronomer: a person who studies stars and planets.
  • Astronaut: a person who travels beyond the atmosphere of the Earth.
  • Atmosphere: a layer of gases around a planet.
  • Basalt lava: molten basalt, a kind of rock.
  • Carbon dioxide: a gas that animals breathe out and plants take in.
  • Cetaur: an icy planetoid that orbits the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.
  • Channel: a groove in the surface of something.
  • Comet: a small icy object orbiting a star.
  • Conjunction: when two objects orbiting the same body come closest together.
  • Continent: a huge landmass on a planet, usually made of tectonic plates that have locked together.
  • Core: the center of a planet or star.
  • Corona: a region of very hot gas that surrounds the photosphere of a star.
  • Crater: a dent in a planet's surface made by a meteorite falling on it.
  • Crust: the outermost layer of a planet's surface.
  • Eclipse: the shadow made when one object comes between another object and the Sun.
  • Energy: what you use to do work.
  • Environment: the conditions on a planet.
  • Equator: an imaginary line around a planet, perpendicular to the axis of rotation.
  • Erosion: the slow wearing away of a surface, usually from wind, water, and temperature changes.
  • Galaxy: a huge mix of gas, dust, stars, planets and other objects that are held together by their own gravity.
  • Gas giant: one of the four outer planets made out of giant balls of gas.
  • Hemisphere: one half of a planet's surface.
  • Lagrange point: the places where the gravity from two orbiting objects balance each other.
  • Lava: molten rock above a planet's surface.
  • Latin: the language of the Roman Empire that was later used by scientists to name things.
  • Mantle: a layer of molten rock below a planet's crust.
  • Maria: a large sea of magma that has cooled into solid rock.
  • Meteor: a small or medium-size rock from space that has not entered a planet's atmosphere yet.
  • Methane: a gas that makes up most of the gas giants.
  • Near Earth asteroid: an asteroid that has an orbit that brings it very close to the earth.
  • Orbit: the path that an object takes around a larger object.
  • Orbit System: a planet and its moons rotating around a star.
  • Organic compounds: compounds (collections of atoms) containing carbon.
  • Phase: how a planet or moon looks to us at some part of its orbit, when it is lit by the Sun.
  • Planet: the celestial body that has a greater mass than all other objects of the same orbit system together and that describes a well-defined, special orbit around a star.
  • Planetary nebula: a great cloud of gas that was blown off by an old star.
  • Photosphere: the layer of a star that releases light and other energy into space.
  • Prominence: an eruption of hot gas at the surface of the Sun.
  • Radar: radio waves used to find distances to and make maps of things.
  • Regolith: loose soil on the Moon created by rocks hitting the surface at very high speed.
  • Retrograde motion: a rotation that is the opposite way from the rotation of most of the Solar System.
  • Retrograde orbit: an orbit that is the opposite way from the orbit of most of the planets and moons in the Solar System.
  • Rotate: to turn around on an axis.
  • Satellite: an object in a stable orbit around a much larger object.
  • Scarp: a type of cliff.
  • Solar day: the time for a planet or moon to rotate so that the Sun is again overhead.
  • Siderial day: the time for a planet or moon to rotate so that a distant star overhead is again overhead.
  • Silicate: an object composed mostly of the element silicon, which makes rocks.
  • Solar wind: a very hot gas that is being blown away from the Sun at a high speed.
  • Spectrum: the colored band of light made when white light passes through a prism.
  • Star: a huge ball of gas that is so heavy that it causes nuclear reactions inside itself. This produces heat and light.
  • Sulfuric acid: a strong type of acid that is used in car batteries, and contains the element sulphur.
  • Supergiant: a star near the end of its life that puffs out into a huge body many times larger than a normal star.
  • Surface area: the area on the outside of something.
  • Tectonic Plate: a solid part of the crust that very slowly moves across the surface of a planet
  • Telescope: a system of lenses or mirrors that are used to see distant objects.
  • Terrestrial planets: the four planets closest to the Sun.
  • Tide: the rise in the surface caused by gravity from another object, such as the Moon or Sun.
  • Tidal lock: when tides have slowed rotation so that a moon or planet is always facing the same side toward the planet or star.
  • Trojan asteroid: an asteroid in the same orbit as a planet or moon that always stays the same distance ahead or behind.
  • Volcanic: something that relates to volcanoes.
  • Volume: the size of a three-dimensional object.
  • White dwarf: a star that has run out of fuel to burn and is slowly cooling off.

 

 
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