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Exoplanets: Glossary
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- 51 Pegasi
- 51 Pegasi is a Sun-like star located 50.9 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It was the first main-sequence star found to have an exoplanet orbiting it
A
- analyze
- study or investigate
- astronomers
- a scientist who studies planets, comets and other space bodies
- atmosphere
- the air or gases that surround a planet
B
- bacteria
- a one celled living organism
C
- carbon dioxide
- a gas given off by animals and taken in by plant
- composition
- what something is made of; the ingredients or parts making up a substance or object
- compressed
- to squeeze together
- coronograph
- an attachment to a telescope designed to block out direct light from a star so that dimmer objects nearby can be seen
D
- debris disk
- disks of dust and other solid material in orbit around a star; the "leftovers" of the process of planet formation that may indicate presence of exoplanets
- decompression
- to separate out from a compressed version - spread apart
- demoted
- to categorize something on a lower level
- detected
- to find or see
- determine
- to find or see or understand
- diverse
- having many differences in type or character, unlike others
- Doppler shift
- change in the frequency of a wave
- dwarf planets
- a space body too small to be called a planet
E
- enhance
- make better
- exoplanets
- planets that exist orbiting stars other than our own sun
- extrasolar planets
- planets that exist orbiting stars other than our own sun
G
- galaxy
- a large system of stars
- gaseous
- to contain or be made of gas
- gravitational
- related to gravity
H
- habitable zone
- the distance from a star most likely to have conditions right for life on a planet
I
- inaccurate
- not quite true
- infared
- electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths longer than the red end of the visible light spectrum
L
- light-year
- distance light travels in one Earth year or 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers (about 93 million miles)
O
- orbiting
- the curved path of a planet around its sun
P
- phenomenon
- unusual wonders of space
- pulsar
- when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself, the explosion leaves a very dense neutron star that emits pulses of radiation at regular intervals - a pulsar
R
- radial velocity
- the speed of an object as it moves toward or away from an observer
- repurpose
- use for a different purpose than originally intended
- rogue planet
- a lonely, nonconforming planet
S
- satellite
- a body that orbits another body
- spectroscopy
- the study of light passing through matter
- starshade
- a device positioned between a space-based telescope and a star being observed, intended to block the light from a planet
T
- technology
- the science of useful tools
- transiting
- the passage of a planet across its sun
U
- universe
- all of time, space and its contents
V
- venture
- project
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