Sun and Solar System Observations
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28 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Aristotle | The first to purpose the geocentric model of the solar system. |
| Aristarchus | Proposed the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun (heliocentric model). His ideas were not accepted by the people of his day and were forgotten for nearly 2000yrs. |
| Ptolemy | Greek (maybe) supported the geocentric model of the solar system. He decided that the planets paths had small circles in addition to their orbits around the Earth. |
| Copernicus | 15th century Polish astronomer who accepted and developed the heliocentric model of the solar system. |
| Galileo | 17th century Italian astronomer who taugh the Copernican theory of the solar system and was sentenced to stay in his house for life. He developed the more advanced form of the telescope. |
| Brahe | 1500's Danish- observed the positions of the planets for over 20 yrs. He recognized that the orbits could not be circles. |
| Kepler | 16th century German astronomer. He was able to figure out the elliptical orbits of the planets. |
| Kepler's 3 Laws | 1. every planet moves in an elliptical orbit with the Sun at one of the foci 2. a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times; all of the planets speed up in their orbits as they approach the sun and slow down as they move away from it. 3. all of the planets orbit the sun at different speeds and he came up with a calculation to determine those rates. |
| Ellipse | circular shape which has two fixed points known as foci. The shape represents the orbits of the planets in our solar sysytem. |
| Newton | (1643-1727) English- figured out how and why the planets stay in their orbits: inertia(force that keeps an object at rest moving in a straight line) gravity(force that attracts all objects towards each other) |
| Interior of the sun | core, radiation zone, convection zone |
| core | center of the sun; temperatures reach as high as 15 million celcius, the suns energy is produced here |
| radiation zone | a very dense region of tightly packed gas; energy is transferred in the form of electromagnetic radiation. |
| convection zone | outermost layer of the sun;s interior;convection currents cause the rising of hot gases and the sinking of cooler gases |
| nuclear fusion | how the sun creates its energy. hydrogen atomes fuse toghether to make helium. |
| atmosphere of the sun | photosphere, chromosphere, corona |
| photosphere | the inner layer, is where light is produced |
| chromosphere | middle layer, can only be seen at the beginning and end of a solar eclips as a reddish glare |
| corona | outer layer, sends out streams of electricity charged particles called solar wind which cause the norther lights |
| Sun's features | sunspots, prominences, solar flares, solar wind, and magnetic storms |
| sunspots | cool gas regions the cooler gas gives off less light and appears darker that the rest of photosphere |
| prominences | reddish loops of gas; sometimes these loops of gas link together and release large amounts of energy as solar flares |
| solar flares | the explosion of super heated gas due to multiple prominences linking together. |
| solar wind | solar particles that can enter Earth's atmosphere creating powerful electric currents that causes gas molecules to glow. Earth's magnetiv field usually blocks the solar wind. |
| magnetic storms | disruption of radio, telephone, and tv signals by solar wind particles interacting with the Earth's magentic field. |
| plane of the ecliptic | the plane in which the planets orbit the sun |
| retrograde motion | motion in which a planet appears to do a loop and go backwards before it continues on its forward motion (optical illusion) |
| light year | the distance light travels in one year (9.5 trillion km/ 5.7 trillion miles) are used to measure distances out of our solar system |
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