Gravity and the Solar System

•When an object follows an elliptical orbit around the sun, there is one point, called _________, where the object is farthest from the sun.

the path that a body follows as it travels around another body in space.

•a force of attraction between objects that is due to their masses and the distances between them.

•There is also a point, called___________ , where the object is closest to the sun.

a kind of cloud, from which solar systems are formed ( the inward pull of gravity is balanced by the outward push of gas pressure in the cloud.)

The inward force that causes an object to move in a circular path

•As the nebula contracted during the formation of the solar system, it began to rotate with increasing speed and flattened out into a disk, called ________________, where our sun formed

all objects in the universe attract each other through gravitational force

The protostellar disk became the _________ in which the planets formed