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| Both a body of knowledge and a process of learning about nature. |
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| A process by which scientists (ideally) go about observing, explaining and predicting physical reality. |
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| When several competing theories describe the same concepts with the same accuracy, choose the simplest one. |
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| The belief that everything revolves around the Earth. |
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| The belief that everything revolves around the sun. |
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| A theory of the overall structure and evolution of the universe. |
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| Slow movement of the planets eastward (leftward) compared to the stars. |
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| Slow movement of the planets to the right (west) compared to the stars. |
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| contains all the information we take for granted. |
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| First to propose heliocentric cosmology. |
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| Devised the first comprehensive heliocentric cosmology. |
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| Geometric relationships between Earth, any other planet, and the sun. |
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| A planet is directly between Earth and the Sun. |
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| Sun is directly between Earth and Mercury or Venus. |
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| Angle between the Sun and a planet as viewed from Earth. |
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| greatest eastern/western elongation |
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| Mercury and Venus are as far from the Sun in angle as they can be. |
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| When a planet appears to be behind the Sun as seen from Earth. |
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| When a planet is opposite the Sun in the sky. |
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| Time it takes a planet to make on orbit of the Sun. |
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| Time that elapses between two successive identical configurations as seen from Earth. |
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| Used parallax to prove the 1572 supernova explosion was much further away than previously believed. |
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| Variation in angle from viewing an object from different locations. |
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| Two points inside an ellipse through which it's longest diameter passes. |
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| passes through both foci across ellipse. |
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| Half the length of the major axis. Also the average distance between a planet and the sun. |
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| The orbit of a planet around the sun is an ellipse with the Sun at one focus. |
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| Measure of the shape of a planet's orbit around the sun, ranging for circular to nearly a straight line. |
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| The part of a planet's orbit nearest the Sun. |
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| The part of a planet's orbit furthest from the Sun. |
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| A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time. |
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| The square of a planet's sidereal period around the Sun is directly proportional to the cube of the length of it's orbit's semimajor axis. |
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| Measure of the total number of particles contained in a unit (expressed in kg). |
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| Force with which you push down on a scale due to gravitational attraction of the world on which you stand. |
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| Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto. |
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| attraction between all objects due to their masses. |
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| Law of Inertia: Inertia is the property of matter that keeps an object at rest or moving in a straight line at a constant speed unless acted upon by a net external force. |
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| Speed and direction of motion. |
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| The rate at which velocity changes with time. |
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| The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on it and is inversely proportional to it's mass. |
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| Action and Reaction: Whenever one object exerts force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first object. |
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| A measure of how much energy is stored in an object due to it's rotation and revolution. Depends on amount of mass, speed of rotation/revolution, and how spread out mass is. |
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| Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation |
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| Objects attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. |
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| Total mass divided by total volume. |
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| A hypothesis that has withstood observational or experimental tests. |
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| An open curve formed by cutting a circular cone at an angel parallel to the sides of the cone. |
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| An open curve obtained by cutting a cone with a plane. |
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| All elements other than helium and hydrogen. |
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| The cloud of gas and dust from which the sun and rest of the solar system formed. |
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| The Sun prior to the time when hydrogen fusion began in it's core. |
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| A disk of material encircling a protostar or newborn star. |
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| An object orbiting a star that is held together by it's own gravitational force in a nearly spherical shape, that is able to clean it's neighborhood of debris, and is not the satellite of a larger body. |
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| Primordial asteroid-like object from which the planets accreted. |
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| The embryonic stage of a planet when it's growing because of collisions with planetesimals. |
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| Gradual accumulation of matter by an astronomical body, usually caused by gravity. |
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| Traditional theory of giant planet formation that begins with terrestrial planets slowly pulling abundant amounts of water, hydrogen and helium onto themselves. |
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| gravitational instability model |
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| The theory of giant planet formation in which gases collapse together quickly. |
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| Tilt or angle of an object's orbital plane around the sun compared to the ecliptic. |
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| A circular depression on a celestial body caused by the impact of a meteoroid, asteroid or comet, or by a volcano. |
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| Any of the rocky objects larger than a few hundred meters in diameter that orbits the Sun. |
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| A 1.5 AU wide region between orbits of Mars and Jupiter in which most asteroids are found. |
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| A small rock in interplanetary space. |
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| A small body of ice and dust in orbit around the Sun. |
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