VOCABULARY #3 flashcards

Terms	Definitions
spectrum	The band of colors produced when white light passes through a prism.
light-year	The distance that light travels in one year; about 9.46 trillion kilometers.
parallax	An apparent shift in the position of an object when viewed from different locations.
red giant	a large, reddish star late in its life cycle.
white dwarf	A hot, small, dim star that is the leftover center of an old star.
supernova	A gigantic explosion in which a massive star collapses and throws its outer layers into space.
neutron star	A star that has collapsed under gravity to the point that the electrons and protons have smashed together to form neutrons.
pulsar	A rapidly spinning neutron star that emits rapid pulses of radio and optical energy.
black hole	An object so massive and dense that even light cannot escape its gravity.
galaxy	A collection of stars, dust, and gas bound together by gravity.
nebula	A large cloud of gas and dust in interstellar space; a region in space where stars are born or where stars explode at the end of their lives.
comet	A small body of ice, rock, and cosmic dust, that follows and elliptical orbit around the sun and that gives off gas and dust in the form of a tail as it passes close to the sun.
satellite	A natural or artificial body that revolves around a planet.
terrestrial planet	One of the highly dense planets nearest to the sun; Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth.
astronomical unit	The average distance between the earth and the sun; approximately 150 million kilometers.

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