Our Place in Space-Vocabulary

VOCABULARY

by Catherine Cooper

The solar system consists of the Sun and everything that orbits, or travels around the Sun.

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​Asteroids are rocky worlds revolving around the sun that are too small to be called planets.

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​A planet is a large natural object that orbits or travels around a star. Eight planets orbit the star called the Sun.

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Comets are celestial objects made of frozen ice, rocks and gases that orbit around the Sun.​

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​Stars are huge, glowing balls of gases. The closest star to Earth is the Sun.

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A galaxy is a group of stars, clouds of gas, and dust particles that move together through the universe. There are billions of galaxies in the universe.​

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The Universe is all of space and everything in it including stars, planets, galaxies, etc.​

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An orbit is the path of an object around a particular point in space.​

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The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It contains over 200 billion stars, including our Sun.​

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​The Sun is a medium-sized, yellow star at the center of our solar system. Everything in the solar systems revolves around the Sun. The Sun is the ONLY star in our solar system.

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The Moon is a large natural object that orbits, or travels around, Earth. After the Sun it is the brightest object in the sky.​

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The four planets closest to the Sun are called the inner planets. They are mostly composed of rock and likely have a core made of iron.​

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The four planets beyond the asteroid belt are the outer planets. The outer planets are composed mostly of gases, are considerably larger than the inner planets and have many moons. ​

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