Astronomy Concepts

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Asteroid

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A solid, rocky, and/or metallic body that independently orbits the sun; large, irregularly shaped, except for the few larger spherical ones; mostly located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

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Big Bang Theory

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States that the present universe started as a big explosion and that it is still expanding.

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Celestial Object

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Any object in the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere, including moons, comets, planets, stars, and galaxies.

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Comet

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A low-density object composed of materials that easily vaporize and some other solids; independently orbits the sun or other stars.

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Doppler Effect

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The apparent wavelength shifting of electromagnetic energy, caused by the relative motion between the energy source and the observer; also called redshift.

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Eccentricity

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The degree of ovalness of an ellipse or how far an ellipse is from being a circle, computed using a specific formula.

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Ellipse

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A closed curve around two fixed points, called foci, in which the sum of the distances between any point of the curve and the foci is a constant.

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Foci (plural of Focus)

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In an ellipse, either of two fixed points located so that the sum of their distances to any point on the ellipse is constant.

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Galaxy

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Large groupings of millions or billions of stars and other forms of mass held together by gravitation; our galaxy is called the Milky Way.

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Gravitation

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The attractive force that exists between any two objects in the universe, proportional to the product of the masses of the objects and the inverse square of the distance between their centers.