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| Discovered Jupiter's Great Red Spot. He noticed that Saturn had more than one ring. The gap between his outer and inner ring is called Cassini's division. He also discovered four of Saturn's moons. |
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| (early 17th century) finally described correct movement of planets as orbiting Sun in ellipses (ovals), not circles. |
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| A Dutch observer who was the first person to realize that the objects around Saturn were actually rings. He also noticed that a V-shaped marking appeared regularly on Mars's disc. From this, he concluded that Mars rotated roughly once every twenty-four hours. He also invented a new way of making telescope lenses, and his instruments gave much sharper images of the planets. |
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| Used mathematics to calculate the position of Neptune. He was in a race with astronomers from Cambridge to find this position, and eventually he found it by comparing the stars he saw in his telescope to the stars on a star chart. |
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| He discovered that at 23.98 degrees, Mars's tilt is almost identical to Earth's tilt. He also thought that Mars had polar caps made of ice and snow, seas, and red plains of dry land, but eventually he found out that Mars's atmosphere is far too thin to sustain seas. He taught himself to make his own telescopes. The easiest to make was a reflector, with curved mirrors made of a metal alloy. Eventually, he made better telescopes than the astronomers of the Royal Observatory. He used these telescopes to discover Uranus in 1781. |
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| An Italian astronomer who released new maps of Mars which showed details never seen before. The maps revealed that the dark markings on Mars were connected up with an extensive network of long, fine, straight lines, or canali. These were thought to be canals that Martian engineers had used to get water from the melting polar caps. |
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| (early 16th century) revisited earlier idea of Aristarchus (~ 300 B.C.) of Sun-centered system (heliocentrism), but continued with planets moving around the Sun in epicycle circles. |
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| A German astronomer who saw Jupiter's moons several days before Galileo. He was not credited with finding the moons since Galileo was more on top of things, but he was the one who suggested the current names of the Galilean Moons. |
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| Johann Hieronymus Schröter |
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| A German astronomer who studied VENUS almost every single day for almost the entire day for quite some time. He is the astronomer that first recorded his sightings of the Himalayas of Venus in 1790 using a 7 foot reflector telescope. He noticed that the southern hemisphere was slightly illuminated and jagged which led to his discovery of the mountains on Venus which were thought to be over 23 miles high. He also found the rotation period of Venus by looking at how the light played off the mountains. William Herschell disbelieved his paper about the mountains of Venus since he had also viewed the planet with a 7 foot telescope 2 years before and not seen them. |
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| A model of the solar system that holds that Earth is at the center of the universe and all other bodies are in orbit around it. |
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| A model of the solar system that is centered on the Sun, with Earth in motion about the Sun. |
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| Jupiter's four largest moons which include, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. |
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| The equatorial zones of a planet rotate a little faster than the high latitudes. |
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| Used to describe Jupiter's banded appearance and to a lesser extent the appearance of the other jovian worlds. |
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| An apparently very stable pattern of eastward and westward wind flow that underlies Jupiter's bands. |
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| When the helium on Saturn dissolves from the surrounding hydrogen and then turns into liquid helium, much like water turns to mist on Earth. |
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| A dark band about 2/3 of the way out from the inner edge of Saturn's rings. From Earth the band looks like a gap in the ring. |
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| For any given planet and any given moon, the critical distance inside of which the moon is destroyed is known as the tidal stability limit or the ______________ |
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| Two of Saturn's small moons that influence the intricate ring structure and thinness of Saturn's rings. The moons are called Prometheus and Pandora. |
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| One of five special points in the plane of two massive bodies orbiting one another, where a third body of negligible mass can remain in equilibrium. |
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| Unpredictable tumbling motion that non-spherical bodies in eccentric orbits, such as Saturn's satellite Hyperion, can exhibit. No amount of observation of an object rotating like this will ever show a well-defined period. |
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| Prominent storm system in the atmosphere of Neptune observed by Voyager 2, near the equator of the planet. The system was comparable in size to Earth. |
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| The effect of chemical reactions that result when high-energy particles strike the icy surfaces of objects in the outer solar system. The reactions lead to a buildup of a dark layer of material. This is thought to contribute to the generally darker coloration of many of the moons and rings in the outer solar system. |
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| The dimming of starlight produced when a solar system object such as a planet, moon, or ring passes directly in front of a star. |
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| In the late 1880s, he devoted himself to the study of the Martian canal system because Shiaparelli's eyesight was failing. He made countless drawings and photographs of the Martian surface with the later maps and globes showing over 200 canals, all linear and very artificial in appearance. He thought that the Martians must be globally united and free from war. He was a pacifist and was eager to broadcast the Martian ways to the world. However, the more he said about this, the more alienated he was from mainstream astronomy. However, his later calculations led to the discovery of Pluto. |
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| This is the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon. Historically, the principal concern of this science was the mapping and naming of the lunar maria, craters, mountain ranges, and other various features. |
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| This says that when we see something, we decide what it is by looking first at outside factors that influence it and then we go to factors inside our brain to determine what the thing is. |
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| This does not produce a literal transcription of reality. Many things seen by the eye are influenced by outside and inside factors to make us think we see something when we really do not. This is particularly true under difficult viewing conditions. Your eye enhances borders of contrasts, sharpens boundaries blurred by diffraction and chromatic aberration. |
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| Greek astronomer (2nd century A.D.) devised system of epicycles (circles) in which the 5 planets orbited around the Earth. This system remained in vogue for over 1400 years. |
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| (early 17th century) “confirms” heliocentrism with telescopic discovery of moons (Galilean satellites) orbiting around Jupiter. |
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| Telescopic factors, like the quality of the mirror or lens, also influence what one sees. Sometimes there are aberrations (flaws or distortions) in the optics caused by a tarnished or poorly polished mirror that produce viewed objects to be blurred/out of shape (spherical aberration) or different colors (chromatic aberration) caused by imperfect grinding of a lens. |
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| A short glimpse of an object during ideal, steady sky conditions. |
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Observers seeing light vs. dark spots on Moon and planets – analogous to lands and seas on Earth.
Mapmakers (like Riccioli) giving watery names to dark spots.
Introduction of Copernican system, where Earth is only one of the planets.
Followed that all others must equally be like Earth.
Galileo’s observation that the Milky Way (our galaxy) is made up of many stars potentially having orbiting planets and inhabitants. |
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| Average distance from the Sun = 483 million miles with an 11.9 year orbital period. It has a diameter about 11 times the size of Earth's. |
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| Composed of 82% Hydrogen and 17% Helium and has 60+ known moons. |
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| Internal Structure believed to consist of a small, solid core at center which is composed of rocky materials. It is surrounded by liquid metallic and gaseous hydrogen atmosphere able to produce a powerful magnetic field. |
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| Has a very rapid rotation of 9 hours and 55 minutes which is faster than any other planet. |
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| Innermost of the Galilean satellites. It's surface is covered by sulfur compounds and there are many volcanoes. |
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| One of the Galilean satellites which has water ice exposed on the surface. The surface is very smooth and may have liquid water underneath. |
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| Largest satellite in our solar system. It is over twice the size of our moon. |
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| This is the outermost Galilean satellite. It is the most heavily cratered planetary body in solar. The surface is relatively dark, and appears to be composed of dirty water ice. |
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| This planet has an average distance of 887 million miles from the Sun and has an orbital period of 29.5 yrs.It has a diameter about 9.5 times the size of the Earth's. |
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| Has a larger gas envelope than Jupiter, but the core is most likely larger. |
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| Has 6 rings that feed off of material from nearby small moons continually broken up by cometary impact. |
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| Has 30+ known moons. The largest of these are Titan and Rhea. |
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| The second largest moon in the solar system and has an atmosphere rich in nitrogen. |
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| The 3rd largest planet in the solar system. Has a blue-green appearance and a higher density than a few of the other Jovian planets. |
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| This planet's axis is tipped 98 degrees from vertical so it lies on its side. It is thought that it was struck in its early history by an Earth-sized object and knocked askew. |
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| This planet has an average distance of 1.7 billion miles from the Sun and an orbital period of 84 years. It has a diameter about 4 times the size of Earth's. |
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| Has 9 thin, dark rings believed to be composed of carbonaceous materials. |
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| Has 15 known moons including Titania, Oberon, and Umbriel. |
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| This is the farthest planet from the sun with an average distance of 2.7 billion miles. It has an orbital period of 165 years. |
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| Large gas and ice rich planet with a similar size and density to Uranus, but with a normal rotation direction. |
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| Has 3 principal rings which are narrow and made of dark particles. |
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| Has 8 known moons; Triton and Nereid are the largest. |
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| This is one of Neptune's moons. It has a retrograde orbit and a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and methane. At least one form of volcanic eruption is active here. |
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