Meteor: The streak of light caused when a meteoroid enters a planet’s atmosphere and starts to burn from the heat of friction. Matter: The stuff that everything is made of. Mass: The amount of matter something is made of. Earth has a magnetic field and its extension into space helps protect us from space weather. Magnetic field: The space around a magnet where the magnetic force is active. When things are very far away, it’s easier to talk about their distance in light years than millions or billions or trillions of miles. It’s the distance light travels in one year. Light year: It’s not a year, or an amount of time at all. During a La Niña year, winter temperatures are warmer than normal in the Southeast and cooler than normal in the Northwest United States. La Niña happens because of unusually cold sea surface temperatures across the east-central Equatorial Pacific. Pluto is the best known of these icy worlds. Kuiper Belt: A donut-shaped ring of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. We call it infrared because these waves are just a little longer than the wavelengths of red light we can see. It is made of waves released by hot objects, such as stars. Infrared: Part of the electromagnetic spectrum that we cannot see with our eyes but can feel as heat. Some greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and nitrous oxide. Greenhouse gas: Gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from the sun. Gravity: A force that pulls matter together. It’s a system that uses satellites, ground stations, and receivers to tell you exactly where you are on Earth. GPS: This stands for Global Positioning System. This includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays.Įquator: The circle around a planet or moon that is the same distance from its north pole and its south pole.Įxoplanet: A planet that freely floats between stars or one that orbits a star outside our solar system. It starts with unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean near the equator.Įlectromagnetic Spectrum: The name for all the different kinds of light and energy in the universe. It is so big that it affects weather all over the world. Pluto is the best known of the dwarf planets.Įl Niño: A weather condition that sometimes occurs in the Pacific Ocean. A dwarf planet is much smaller than a planet (smaller even than Earth's moon), but it is not a moon. That means there are other objects orbiting at roughly the same distance from the sun. But unlike planets, dwarf planets are not able to clear their path around the sun. They can be caused by an explosion or the impact of a meteorite.ĭwarf planet: Objects that are round and orbit the sun, just like planets do. We have one view of stars here on Earth, but from another solar system or galaxy, the constellations would look different.Ĭosmos: The universe seen as an orderly, harmonious whole.Ĭrater: A large, bowl-shaped dent in the ground. The stars form certain patterns based on where you are. They're often named after an animal, object, or person. They are also called the northern lights.īlack hole: A place in space where matter and light cannot escape if they fall in.Ĭomet: An icy rock that lets off gas and dust, which may form tails when it is flying close to a sun.Ĭonstellation: A group of stars in the sky. They are also called the southern lights.Īurora borealis: Bright glows and bands of light that appear in the skies at night near the North Pole. An atom with six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons is a carbon atom.Īurora australis: Bright glows and bands of light that appear in the skies at night near the South Pole. For example, the simplest atom with one proton and one electron is a hydrogen atom.

It is made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Atom: The basic building block of matter.

Starmade asteroid