| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Telescope | A device that makes distant objects appear to be closer. |
| Electromagnetic Radiation | Energy that can travel through space in the form of waves, another form of light. |
| Visible Light | The light that you can see. |
| Wavelength | The distance between the crest of one wave and the crest of the next wave |
| Optical Telescope | A telescope that uses lenses of mirrors to collect and focus visible light |
| Refracting Telescope | Uses convex lenses to gather and focus light |
| Convex Lens | A piece of transparent glass, curved so that the middle is thicker than the edges. |
| Reflecting Telescope | Uses a curved mirror to collect and focus light. |
| Radio Telescopes | Devices used to detect radio waves from objects in space |
| Observatory | A building that contains one or more telescopes |
| Constellations | Groups of stars forming pictures of people or animals |
| Color, Temperature, Size, Composition, and Brightness | Characteristics used to classify stars |
| Spectrograph | A device that breaks light into colors and produces an image |
| Apparent Brightness | A stars brightness as seen from Earth |
| Absolute Brightness | The brightness a star would have if it were at a standard distance from Earth |
| Light-Year | The distance that light travels in one year |
| Parallax | the apparent change in position of an object when you look at it from different places |
| Nebula | A large cloud of gas and dust spread out in an immense volume |
| Protostar | A contracting cloud of gas and dust with enough mass to form a star |
| White Dwarf | The blue-white core of the star that is left behind |
| supernova | a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass. |
| Neutron Stars | the remains of high-mass stars. |
| Main Sequence | Diagonal area |
| Black Hole | An object with gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. |
| Pulsars | Spinning neutron stars. |
| Binary Stars | Star systems that have two stars are called double stars or _________ ________. |
| Eclipsing Binary | One star periodically blocks the light from another |
| Open Clusters | Loose, disorganized appearance and contain no more than a few thousand stars |
| Globular Clusters | Large grouping or older stars, round, and densely packed with stars, some more than 1,000,000 |
| Galaxy | A huge group of single stars, star systems, star clusters, dust, and gas bound together by gravity. |
| Spiral Galaxies | Galaxies that appear to have a bulge in the middle and arms that spiral outward, like pinwheels. |
| Elliptical Galaxies | Look like round or flattened balls. |
| Irregular Galaxies | Do not have regular shapes, typically smaller than other types or galaxies, generally have bright, young stars and lots of gas and dust to form new stars. |
| Quasars | Very bright objects, very bright, very far away. |
| Universe | All of space and everything in it. |
| Scientific Notation | Uses powers of ten to write very large or very small numbers. |
| BIG Bang | Tiny universe that was extremely hot and dense, then it exploded. |
| Hubble's Law | States that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. |
| Cosmic Background Radiation | the leftover thermal energy from the big bang |
| Solar Nebula | A large cloud of gas and dust such as the one that formed our solar system is called a _______ _________ |
| Planetesimals | In the outer parts of the disk, gas and dust formed small asteroid-like and comet-like bodies called ____________. |
| Dark Matter | Matter that does not give off electromagnetic radiation. |
| Dark Energy | What scientists believe the universe is made up of and dark matter. |
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