General Science - Solar Syste,

• Asteroid


  are bodies of rock and ice in space. millions of these orbit around the sun - most between mars and jupiter. They vary in size between 1 meter across and 600 miles across.
• Atmosphere


  the layer of gas around a planet
• comet


  is a body of ice, dust and bits of rock that passes through space leaving a tail of ice and dust behind it. it may be up to 25 miles across
• Day


  the length of time it takes the earth to spin all the way around so that you get a night and a day - 24 hours
• Galaxy


  a large group of stars, all orbiting a central point.
• Milky way


  is the galaxy that contains our solar system and is made up of billions of stars, as well as other celestial objects. It is a spiral shaped galaxy and is just one of the many galaxies in the universe
• Gravity


  the force that attracts a moon to a planet, or a planet to a star
• light year


  the distance that light travels in one year. 5.9 trillion miles
• meteor


  a small piece of debris in space, up to the size of a boulder
• milky way


  the galaxy we live in
• moon


  a smaller object orbiting a planet. some planets have many of this while earth just has one
• orbit


  the path that a planet takes around the sun, or a moon takes around the planet
• planet


  a large body of either rock or gas that follows a consistent orbit around a star
• planetesimals


  objects, from tens to hundreds of kilometers in diameter, that formed in the solar nebula as an intermediate step between tiny grains and the larger planetary objects we see today; the comets and some asteroids maybe leftover of these
• shooting star


  is not really a star; is a meteor that is passing through the earths atmosphere and has gotten so hot it glows in the night sky
• solar system


  the sun and collection of stars
• solar nebula


  the cloud of gas and dust from which the solar system was formed
• Star


  is a huge ball of very hot gasses held together that gives off lots of light and heat. some of them have planets orbiting around them, but not all do
• Sirius 


  is the brightest star in the sky other than our sun
• Canis major


  a constellation where sirius is located and is known for its striking brightness and white blue color
• sun


  the star in our solar system and also the center. contains about 99.9 percent of all the mass of the solar systsem
• universe


  everything that exists all the galaxies; stars; planets and everything in between
• year


  the length of time it takes the earth to travel around the sun, 365 days
• 4.6 billion years ago


  solar system was formed
• 150 million km or 93 million miles


  distance of the earth revolving around the sun
• 3 months


  mercury orbits the sun in about
• 165 years


  how long neptune orbits
• Galaxy


  the milky way is a
• star


  largest object in the solar system
• gravity


  force of attraction between the earth and moo
• 1/6


  the moons gravity is _ of the earth
• the length of daylight and nighttime would increase

  earth makes one full rotation on its axis approximately every 24 hours, suppose earths period of rotation increased to 28 hours
• a decrease in mars distance from the sun


  current scientific evidence indicates that there is no liquid water on mars, but there is frozen water. this is due to the fact that temp on mars, even during the summer, are well below 0 (32F) it would mostly allow for an increase in temperature and the presence of liquid water on mars
• their tails get longer

  what happens when comets get closer to the sun
• mars and jupiter
• mars and jupiter


  asteroid belt is located etween
• water and ice


  what is comet made up of
• the tilt of earths axis


  characteristics of earth that explains the change of seasomn
• curved arms


  milky way galaxy has
• meteorites


  made primarily of pieces of rock or iron that enter earths atmosphere