Astromnomy Final Terminology

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dark bands around certain planets, notably Jupiter

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Belts

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NASA spacecraft en route to Saturn, carrying the Huygens probe to it's moon Titan

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Cassini

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the effect of an object’s apparent swerving as seen from a rotating body’s surface, as the object moves north or south of a body’s equator. Though the object is proceeding straight, following Newton’s laws of motion, its apparent swerving is attributed to a fictitious force, which isn’t really a force at all

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Coriolis force

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The four brightest satellites of Jupiter

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Galilean satellites

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NASA spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter that sent a probe into Jupiter’s clouds in 1995

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Galileo

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Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune; or even larger extrasolar planets; same as Jovian planets

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Gas Giant Planets

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Using the gravity of one celestial body to change a spacecraft’s energy

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gravity assist

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A giant circulating region on Jupiter

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Giant Red Spot

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with equatorial diameter greater than the polar diameter

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Oblate

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having the diameter along the axis of rotation longer than the equatorial diameter

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Prolate

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belts of charged particles surrounding planets

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Radiation belts

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Giant lightning

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Superbolt

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Bright bands in the clouds of a planet, notably Jupiter's

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Zones

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scientist, born Italian and later director of the Paris Obs

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Cassini

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the major division in the rings of Saturn

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Cassini's division

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the sphere for each mass inside of which blobs of gas cannot agglomerate by gravitational interaction without being torn apart by tidal forces; normally about 2 1/2 times the radius of a planet

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Roche Limit

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an ultraviolet emission on the sunlit side of Uranus thought to result from sunlight splitting hydrogen molecules into protons and electrons, with the electrons accelerated perhaps by the magnetic field; Uranus

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electroglow

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a giant circulating region on Neptune seen by Voyager 2 on Neptune; it has since disappeared

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Great Dark Spot

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the outer limit of the Sun's influence on space; where the solar wind becomes weaker then interstellar matter; neptune

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heliopause

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a reservoir of perhaps hundreds of thousands of solar system objects, each hundreds of kilometers in diameter, orbiting the Sun outside the orbit of Neptune. It is the source of short period comets

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Kuiper Belt

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a method obtaining higher resolution of an image by analysis of a rapid series of exposures that freeze atmosphere blurring

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speckle interferometry

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a sloar-system object, with 2060 chiron as the forst example, intermediate b/w comets and icy planets or satellites and orbiting the sun b/w the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune

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centaur

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of a comet, the region surrounding the head

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coma

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a type of object orbiting the sun, often in a very elongated orbit, that when relatively near to the sun shows a coma and may show a tail

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comet

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realatively simple molecules in comets resulting from the breakup of more complex molecules

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daughter molecules

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a theory explaining comets as amalgams of ices, dust, adn rocks

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dirty snowball

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the dust left behind a comet, reflecting sunlight

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Dust tail

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the puffs of ionized gas trailing a comet

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gas tail

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of a comet, the nucleus and coma together

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head

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an object in the Kuiper belt; many comets and perhaps even the planet pluto are examples

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kuiper belt object

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an occultation by the moon

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lunar occulation by the moon

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the chunks of matter, no more than a few km across, at the center of the head of a comet

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nucleus

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occultation

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the hiding of one astornomical body by another

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the trillions of incipient comets surrounding the solar system in a 50,000 AU sphere

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Oort comet cloud

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the more complex molecules form which observed molecules were formed, as in a comet for which we see simple molecules the persumably came from a parent that contained more atoms

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parent molecules

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gas and dust left behind as a comet orbits sufficiently close to the sun, illuminated by sunlight

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tail

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a type of stony meteorite without chondrules

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achondrite

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a group of asteroids with semimajor axes greater then earth's and perihelion distances b/w 1.017 AU and 1.3 AU; about half across the earth's orbit

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amor asteroids

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a group of asteroids, with semimajor axes greater then Earth's and perihelion distances less than 1.017 AU

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Apollo asteroids

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A "minor planet", a non-luminous chunk of rock smaller then planet-size but larger than a meteoroid, in orbit around a star

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asteroid

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a region of the solar system, b/w the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in which most of the asteroids orbit

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asteroid belt

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a group of asteroids with semimajor axes smaller than 1 AU and aphelion distances greater than 0.983 AU

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Aten asteroids

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a very bright meteor from which a sound is heard

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bolide

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containing a lot of carbon

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carbonaceous

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A type of carbon-rich stony meteor, thought to be primitive material from the early era of the solar system. Chondrules are embedded in carbon-rich minerals.

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carbonaceous chondrites

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A type of stony meteorite that contains small crystalline spherical particles called chondrules.

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chondrite

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an exceptionally bright meteor

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fireball

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iron meteorites

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irons

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a track of light in the sky from rick or dust burning up as it fall's through the earth's atmosphere

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meteor

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The occurrence at yearly intervals of meteors at a higher-than-average rate as the Earth goes through a comet's orbit and the dust left behind by that comet.

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meteor shower

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An interplanetary chunk of rock after it impacts on a planet or moon, especially on the Earth.

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meteorite

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An interplanetary chunk of rock smaller than an asteroid.

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meteoroid

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A tiny meteorite. The micrometeorites that hit the Earth's surface are sufficiently slowed down that they can reach the ground without being vaporized.

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micrometeorite

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asteroids

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minor planets

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A comet or asteroid whose orbit is sufficiently close to Earth's that a collision is possible or even likely in the long term. See Amor asteroids, Apollo asteroids.

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near-earth objects

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the point in the sky from which all the meteors in a meteor shower appear to be coming

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radiant

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meteors

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shooting stars

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a time of many meteors from a common cause

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showers

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not regularly

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sporadic

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a meteor not associated with a shower

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sporadic meteor

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a stony type of meteorite, including the chondrites

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stones

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A type of meteorite including properties of both stoney meteorites (that is, silicates) and iron-nickel meteorites. Pallasites are the dominant example.

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stony-iron meteorite

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Small glassy objects found scattered around the southern part of the southern hemisphere of the Earth.

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tektites

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One of the sub-planetary objects in the Kuiper belt; it was proposed but not accepted that Pluto should be considered as one.

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Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO)

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A group of asteroids that precede or follow Jupiter in its orbit by 60°.

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Trojan asteroids