| Term | Definition |
|---|
| waning | The sunlit part of the moon is getting smaller |
| waxing | the sunlit part of the moon is getting larger |
| Charon | Pluto's only moon |
| Inner Planets | Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars: four planets closest to sun |
| Outer Planets | Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto |
| Mercury | A terrestrial planet; closest to the Sun |
| Venus | similar to earth in size and mass |
| Venus | the sun rises in the west and sets in the east |
| Earth | the sun rises in the east and sets in the west |
| Earth | the only planet we know of that supports life |
| Mars | the red planet |
| Saturn | the second largest planet in the solar system |
| Jupiter | a giant among giants; made primarily of hydrogen and helium |
| Uranus | the planet that is tilted on its side |
| Neptune | the blue world |
| Pluto | The furthest planet from the sun |
| Pluto | the smallest planet |
| Mercury | its year is only 88 Earth days long |
| Annular | eclipse a solar eclipse during which the outer ring of the sun can be seen around the moon |
| Asteroid | a small, rocky body that revolves around the sun |
| Asteroid belt | the region of the solar system most asteroids occupy; roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter |
| Astronomical unit (AU) | the average distance between the Earth and the sun, or approximately 150,000,000 km |
| Comet | a small body of ice, rock, and cosmic dust loosely packed together that gives off gas and dust in the form of a tail as it passes close to the sun |
| Eclipse | an event in which the shadow of one celestial body falls on another |
| Gas giants | the large, gaseous planets of the outer solar system |
| Greenhouse Effect | the natural heating process of a planet, such as the Earth, by which gases in the atmosphere trap heat |
| Kuiper Belt | the region of the solar system outside the orbit of Neptune that is occupied by small, icy, cometlike bodies |
| Light-minute | a unit of length equal to the distance light travels in space in 1 minute, or 18,000,000 km |
| Lunar eclipse | an event in which the shadow of the Earth falls on the moon |
| Meteor | a streak of light caused when a meteoroid or comet dust burns up in the Earth's atmosphere before it reaches the ground |
| Meteorite | "a meteoroid that reaches the Earth's surface without burning up completely" |
| Meteoroid | a very small, rocky body that revolves around the sun |
| Moon | a natural satellite of a planet |
| Oort cloud | "a spherical region of space that surrounds the solar system in which distant comets revolve around the sun" |
| Period of revolution | the time it takes for one body to make one complete orbit, or revolution, around another body in space |
| Period of rotation | the time it takes for an object to rotate once |
| Phases | "the different appearances of the moon due to varying amounts of sunlight on the side of the moon that faces the Earth; results from the changing relative positions of the moon, Earth, and the sun" |
| Prograde rotation | the counterclockwise spin of a planet or moon as seen from above the planet's north pole |
| Retrograde orbit | the clockwise revolution of a satellite around a planet as seen from above the north pole of the planet |
| Retrograde rotation | the clockwise spin of a planet or moon as seen from above the planet's or moon's north pole |
| Revolution | the elliptical motion of a body as it orbits another body in space |
| Rotation | the spinning motion of a body on its axis |
| Satellite | a natural or artificial body that revolves around a planet |
| Solar eclipse | an event in which the shadow of the moon falls on the Earth's surface |
| Surface gravity | the percentage of your Earth weight you would experience on another planet; the weight you would experience on another planet |
| Terrestrial planets | the small, dense, rocky planets of the inner solar sys |
| Mercury | which planet has no moons |
| Venus | which planet has no moons |
| Luna | the Earth's moon is called |
| Mars | this planet has two moons |
| Jupiter | this planet has twenty-eight known moons |
| Saturn | this planet has thirty known moons |
| Uranus | this planet has twenty-one moons |
| Neptune | this planet has eight moons |
| Ions | Electrically charged particles |
| nucleus | the solid center of a comet |
| ellipses | circles that are somewhat stretched out of shape |
| meteor showers | occur when earth passes through dusty debris left behind in the orbit of a comet |
| stony | this is one of the three major types of meteorites |
| metallic | this is one of the three major types of meteorites |
| stony-iron | this is one of the three major types of meteorites |
| Io | the most volcanically active body in the solar system |
| Ganymede | the largest moon of Jupiter |
| Titan | scientists hope to answer questions about how life began on earth by studying this satellite |
| inner planets | small, dense and rocky |
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