space lab book

Any object that exists in space, such as a planet, a star or the moon

A scientist who studies astronomy, which is the study of the Night Sky

The time it takes for an object to orbit another object: Earth's revolution around the Sun is 365.24 days

The turning of an object around an imaginary axis running through it

A group of stars that seem to form a distinctive pattern in the sky

The distance that light travels in one year, about 9.5 x 10 to the power of 12 km

The brightness of a star as seen from Earth

• Smaller groups of stars that form patterns within or between constellations.
• Example: Big Dipper in Ursa Major

Stars that point toward Polaris

Constellations that can be seen all year long

The point or celestial sphere in the sky directly above an observer

The rising and falling of oceans as a result of the Moon's gravity and Earth's gravity

The monthly progression of changes in the appearance of the moon, which result from different portions of the Moon's sunlit side being visible from Earth

The phenomenon in which the full moon passes into Earth's shadow

The phenomenon in which the shadow of the moon falls on Earth's surface

A result of Earth's evolution around the sun, combined with Earth's tilt

An object that orbits one or more stars (and is not a star itself), is spherical, and does not share its orbit with another object. Inner planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, Outer Planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune

A group of planets that circle one or more stars

The movement of an object in the sky, usually a planet, from east to west, rather than its normal motion from west to east

The average distance between Earth and the sun, about 150 x 10 to the power of 6 km

The average distance between the sun and an object that is orbiting the Sun

The first model of the Solar System, stated that Earth was the centre of all planetary motion

States that the sun is the centre of the solar system and has planets orbit the sun in perfect circles

An object composed of rocky material, ice and gas; comes from the kuiper Belt and Oort cloud

A small object that ranges in size from a tiny speck, like a grain of sand, to 500 km wide; most asteroids originate in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

A piece of rock moving through space

A meteoroid that hit's Earth's atmosphere and burns up

A meteoroid that is large enough to pass through Earth's atmosphere and reach the ground, without being totally burned up

Objects that circle the Sun beyond the orbit of neptune

• Radiation consisting of Electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light
• Examples: visible light, radio waves, and X rays

A telescope that uses a lens to collect the light from an object

A telescope that uses a mirror to collect the light from an object

• An artificial (human made) object or vehicle that Orbits Earth, moon or other celestial bodies; also, a celestial body that orbits another of larger size.
• Example: The Moon is the Earth Natural Satellite

The theory that describes how stars and planets form from contracting, spinning disks of gas and dust

A celestial body made of hot gases, mainly hydrogen and some helium

A vast cloud of gas and dust, which may be the birthplace of stars and planets

Hot, condensed object at the centre of a nebula

the process of energy production in which hydrogen nuclei combine to form helium nuclei

The surface layer of the sun

An area of strong magnetic fields on the photosphere

A stream of fast moving charged particles ejected by the Sun into the Solar System

The Sun is needed for all life on Earth. Drives processes like finding sufficient food and providing ourselves with adequate shelter. Also powers the winds and ocean currents. Creates and provides weather and seasons. The sunlight also provides energy for photosynthesis

A star's total energy output per second; it's power in joules per second (j/s)

The magnitude of a star that we would observe if the star were placed 32.6 light years away from Earth

An optical instrument that produces a spectrum from a narrow beam of light, and usually projects the spectrum onto a photographic plate or a digital detector

Certain specific wavelengths within a spectrum characterized by lines; spectral lines identify specific chemical elements

A graph that compares the properties of stars

A narrow band of stars on the H-R diagram that runs diagonally from the upper left (bright,hot stars) to the lower right (dim,cool stars); about 90% of stars, including the Sun, are in the main sequence

A small, dim, hot star

A massive explosion in which the entire outer portion of a star is blown off

A star so dense that only neutrons can exist in the core. The pressure is so great that electrons are squeezed into protons, and eventually forming it.

They consume their hydrogen slowly, as long as 100 billion years and lose significant mass during that time

They consume their hydrogen in about 10 billion years. Once their hydrogen is used up, the core collapses, stars to contract, the temperature increases and the outer layers begin to expand.

They consume their hydrogen even faster that Indermedite-Mass stars causing the star to not lose much weight and remain 12 or more solar masses after the core's temperature rises quickly and to much higher temperatures and the star begins to expand

The galaxy that includes the solar system; appears as a hazy white band in the Night Sky

A huge collection of stars, planets, gas, and dust that is held together by gravity

A collection of stars held together by gravity

A collection of 50 to 1000 stars; appear along the main band of the Milky Way

A collection of 100,000 to 1,000,000 stars, arranged in a distinctive spherical shape; appear around the centre of the Milky Way

The small group of 40 galaxies, includes the Milky Way

A gigantic of 4 to 25 clusters of galaxies, which is hundreds of millions of light-years in size

• A spiral galaxy: Appears like a pinwheel and looks like a plate with a bulge in the middle.
• Elliptical galaxies: Range in shape from perfect a sphere to a stretched out Ellipse. Some look like footballs and some like cigars.
• Irregular galaxies: Do not have a regular shape and made of new forming stars and old stars

The study of the universe

• The change in frequency of a light source due to it's motion relative to an observer; also the change in the pitch of a sound due to the motion of the source relative to an observer.
• Example: Change of the pitch of an ambulance siren approaches you, passes you and then moves away

The effect in which objects are moving away from an observer have their wavelengths lengthened, towards the red end of the visible spectrum

The effect in which objects are moving towards an observer have their wavelengths shortened, toward the blue end of the visible spectrum

The event that may have triggered the expansion of the universe 14 billion years ago

The radiation left over from the big bang, which fills the universe

The most abundant form of matter in the universe; invisible to telescope. It's true identity is unknown and very little is learned about it.

A form of energy that makes up nearly three quarters of the universe; has the affect of increasing the expansion of the universe. Astronomers don't understand it's true nature