Planets & Comets, Asteroids and Meteors

1. a ball of ice and dust who orbits around the sun in a long, narrow ellipse
3. ______ planet – a planet that is composed primarily of silicate rocks or metals. Also known as the terrestrial planets, which are the four inner planets who orbits closest to the sun.
4. the spinning of the Earth on its axis, day and night (24 hours)
5. any consolidated, large object which orbits a star
6. - the area in space between Mars and Jupiter where most asteroids orbit.
7. _______ planet - a large planet that is mainly made up of gases. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are examples of this.
8. _______ planet - a planet whose orbit lies within the asteroid belt, i.e., Mercury, Venus, Earth, or Mars.
9. ________ effect - the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface.
11. _______ planet - a planet whose orbit lies outside the asteroid belt, i.e., Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune.
12. when a meteoroid burns in the atmosphere and hits the ground
13. to revolve around another object.
14. objects revolving around the sun that are too small and too numerous to be considered planets
15. the force that pulls an apple to the ground, pulls the moon toward Earth, keeps the planets in orbit and attract objects towards each other

2. _______ Galaxy - the galaxy to which Earth and other components of our Solar System belong
4. the movement of one object around another, Earth around the sun, year; 365 1/4 days
6. _______ unit - a unit of measurement equal to 149.6 million kilometers, the mean distance from the center of the earth to the center of the sun.
10. the streak of light in the sky produced by the burning of a meteoroid in Earth's atmosphere
12. a chunk of rock or dust in space that comes from comets or asteroids

Planets & Comets, Asteroids and Meteors - by Ethan Canaday