astronomy: The branch of science that deals with celestial bodies, space, and the physical universe. People who work in this field are called astronomers.
Actions: The way something, usually a person or other living thing, acts towards others or acts itself.
Binary Stars: A system in which two stars revolve around each other or two stars revolve around a common center.
cloud: A plume of molecules or particles such as water droplets that move under the action of external forces such as wind, radiation, or water currents.
constellation: The pattern formed by prominent stars that appear close together in the night sky. Modern astronomers divide the sky into 88 constellations, 12 of which (known as the zodiac) lie along the path that the sun moves across the sky during the year. Cancri is the original Greek name for Cancer, one of the 12 zodiacal constellations.
Space: An adjective referring to the universe, i.e. the cosmos and everything in it.
data: Facts or statistics collected for analysis, but not necessarily organized in a meaningful way. In the case of digital information (the type stored in a computer), these data are usually numbers stored in binary code, represented as a string of 0s and 1s.
Discharge: To suddenly or forcibly push or throw something from its position, container, or housing.
environment: The sum of everything that exists around some organism or process and the conditions that those things create. Environment can refer to the weather or ecosystem that some animal lives in, or the temperature and humidity (or the arrangement of things near the item of interest).
Gamma rays: High-energy radiation often produced by processes in and around exploding stars. Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light.
gravity: The force that attracts anything with mass or volume to anything with mass. The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational force.
Light years: The distance light travels in one year is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers (about 6 trillion miles). To visualize this length, imagine a rope long enough to circle the Earth. The rope would be just over 40,000 kilometers (24,900 miles) long. Take the rope and straighten it out. Then, take 236 million pieces of the same length and lay them end to end. The total distance the rope would travel would be one light-year.
mass: A number that indicates how much an object resists acceleration or deceleration. It is essentially a measure of how much material an object is made of.
Case: Something that occupies space and has mass. Everything that has matter on Earth has a property called “weight.”
Rising Star: An explosion caused by the accumulation and subsequent fusion of hydrogen on the surface of a white dwarf.
Observatory: (in astronomy) A building or structure (such as a satellite) that houses one or more telescopes. It can also be a system of structures that make up a telescope complex.
planet: They are large celestial bodies that orbit stars, but unlike stars, they do not produce visible light.
Pressure: A force applied uniformly over an entire surface, measured as force per unit area.
wireless: Refers to radio waves or devices that receive these transmissions. Radio waves are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that people often use for long-distance communication. Longer than visible light waves, radio waves are used to transmit radio and television signals. They are also used in radar. Many celestial bodies also radiate some of their energy as radio waves.
Red giant: A star with a large diameter and a relatively cool surface. This is the stage in a star’s life that occurs after the burning of hydrogen has stopped. Red giants have a central core where helium is fused to carbon.
shock wave: A small region within a gas or fluid where the properties of the host material are dramatically altered by the passage of some object (such as an airplane in air or a simple bubble in water). Passing through a shock wave causes a brief, almost instantaneous surge in the pressure, temperature, and density of the region.
Star: The basic building blocks from which galaxies are made. Stars form when gravity compresses gas clouds. When a star becomes hot enough, it emits light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The Sun is the closest star to us.
wonderful: An adjective meaning of or relating to the stars.
Supernova: (plural: supernova or supernovae) A star that has lost most (or all) of its mass in a catastrophic explosion and suddenly becomes much brighter.
system: A network of parts working together to accomplish some function. For example, blood, blood vessels, and the heart are the main components of the human body’s circulatory system. Similarly, trains, platforms, tracks, road signals, and overpasses are some of the potential components of a country’s rail system. System can also apply to a process or idea that is part of some method or ordered series of steps to complete a task.
Type 1a supernova: A supernova resulting from some binary star systems in which a white dwarf acquires material from a companion star. The white dwarf eventually gains so much mass that it explodes.
White dwarf: A small, extremely dense remnant of a star, now the size of a planet, left over when a star roughly the mass of our Sun runs out of hydrogen, its nuclear fuel, and sheds its outer layers.
Source: www.snexplores.org
