Fool those dumb ad-inserting ISPs
Brightness of a star | Absolute magnitude |
Southern Hemisphere aurora frequently called (the) “Southern Lights” | Aurora Australis |
Northern Hemisphere aurora frequently called the “Northern Lights” | Aurora Borealis |
Theory that the universe originated in a cataclysmic explosion of a hot, dense mass of matter | Big Bang (theory) |
Hypothetical heavenly object in which gravitation is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape its attraction | Black Hole |
Mass of cosmic dust and ice orbiting the sun, often called a “dirty snowball” | Comet |
Polish “Father of Astronomy” who first proposed that all planets revolve around the sun | Copernicus, Nicolaus |
Imaginary but apparent force that appears to affect any object moving on a rotating surface, a force attributed to the rotation of the Earth | Coriolis effect (force) |
Hot, outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere | Corona |
The universe, especially as an orderly, harmonious system | Cosmos |
Apparent change in the frequency of sound, light, or radio waves caused by a change in the distance between the source of the wave and the receiver | Doppler effect |
Celestial body’s blocking of the sun’s light to another heavenly body | Eclipse |
German-American scientist who first stated the theory of relativity | Einstein, Albert |
Mass of dust, gas, and stars held together by gravitation and having a diameter of thousands of light years | Galaxy |
Italian scientist who improved the original telescopes and was the first astronomer to use one | Galileo |
Orbit of a satellite that is maintaining its position over the same spot on the earth | Geosynchronous (geostationary) orbit |
English astronomer who predicted that the great comet he observed in 1682 was the same one observed in 1531 and 1607 and that it would reappear 76 years later (it reappeared in 1758, 1835, 1910, and 1986, and it is named Halley’s Comet in his honor) | Halley, Edmond |
American astronomer who was the first to demonstrate that the universe contains star systems other than our galaxy and that all galaxies beyond the Milky Way are moving away from the Earth | Hubble, Edwin |
Orbiting space telescope named after Edwin Hubble | Hubble Space Telescope |
German astronomer who developed his 3 laws of planetary motion by the careful analysis of the data that his mentor, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, had compiled | Kepler, Johannes |
Measure of about 6 trillion miles, used to measure distances between objects in outer space to or between stars | Light-year |
Measure of a star’s brightness | Magnitude |
Astronomer who discovered a comet in 1847 and became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1848 | Mitchell, Maria |
Earth’s nearest neighbor in space, located on the average about 238,000 miles from the Earth—it takes about 27 2 days for it to travel around the Earth | Moon |
Cloudlike region of gas and dust among the stars | Nebula |
Star that is frequently the source of powerful X-rays and is made up almost entirely of a very dense mass of electrically neutral subatomic particles | Neutron star |
Star that brightens suddenly and then fades | Nova |
Path of one celestial body about another celestial body | Orbit |
Part of the Earth’s or moon’s shadow from which part of the solar disk is visible as during an eclipse | Penumbra |
Model of the solar system that projects images of heavenly bodies on a dome-shaped ceiling | Planetarium |
Rapidly spinning neutron star that emits short, intense pulses of radiation, especially radio waves, with a high degree of regularity | Pulsar |
Most distant objects yet detected in the universe, whose name is derived from “quasi-stellar” | Quasars |
Any star with great size and brightness and a relatively low surface temperature | Red giant |
Celestial body that orbits a planet or larger body, such as the artificial bodies placed in orbit around the Earth to transmit weather information or TV signals, etc. | Satellite |
Celestial body that gives off light, such as the sun | Star |
Sky’s brightest body and the one around which the Earth and other planets revolve—it is about 93 million miles from the Earth, and its chemical makeup is about 75% hydrogen and about 25% helium | Sun |
Dark spot on the surface of the sun that is associated with disturbances of the Earth’s magnetic field | Sunspot |
Star that explodes or a nova that is far brighter than an ordinary nova | Supernova |
Darkest part of the shadow cast by the Earth or moon during an eclipse | Umbra |
All of the matter and energy in space and time, including the Earth, the stars, galaxies, and other celestial bodies | Universe |
Lowest possible energy state | Vacuum |
Bands of high radiation circling the earth | Van Allen Belts |
Any star with low luminosity, small size, and great density | White dwarf |
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