Our Solar System Vocabulary

1. Retrograde Motion - an apparent change in the movement of the planet through the sky.

2. Astronomical 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.

3. Perihelion - the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the
sun.

4. Aphelion - the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is furthest from
the sun.

5. Eccentricity - measure of how an orbit deviates from circular

6. Planetesimal - a minute planet; a body that could or did come together with many others
under gravitation to form a planet.

7. Asteroid - a small rocky body orbiting the sun. Large numbers of these, ranging in size from
nearly 600 miles (1,000 km) across (Ceres) to dust particles, are found (as the asteroid belt )
especially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, though some have more eccentric orbits, and a
few pass close to the earth or enter the atmosphere as meteors.

8. Meteoroid - a small body moving in the solar system that would become a meteor if it
entered the earth's atmosphere.

9. Meteor - a small body of matter from outer space that enters the earth's atmosphere,
becoming incandescent as a result of friction and appearing as a streak of light.

10. Comet - a celestial object consisting of a nucleus of ice and dust and, when near the sun, a
“tail” of gas and dust particles pointing away from the sun.

11. Coma - nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet, formed when the comet passes
close to the Sun on its highly elliptical orbit

12. Nucleus - a specialized, usually spherical mass of protoplasm encased in a double membrane,
and found in most living eukaryotic cells, directing their growth, metabolism, and reproduction,
and functioning in the transmission of genic characters.

13. Meteor Shower - a number of meteors that appear to radiate from one point in the sky at a
particular date each year, due to the earth's regularly passing through a field of particles at that
position in its orbit. Meteor showers are named after the constellation in which the radiant is
situated, e.g., the Perseids.