Astronomy Flashcards
(20 cards)
Ptolemy
a Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises.
Copernicus
a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center
Brahe, Tycho
a Danish astronomer, known for his comprehensive and unprecedentedly accurate astronomical observations
Kepler, Johannes
a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music.
Galileo
an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath
Newton, Isaac
an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher
Hubble, Edwin
an American astronomer
Ursa major
the great bear
Ursa minor
a constellation located in the far northern sky
Orion
a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world
Canis major
a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere
Cassiopeia
a constellation in the northern sky named after the vain queen Cassiopeia, mother of Andromeda, in Greek mythology, who boasted about her unrivaled beauty.
Red giant
a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass in a late phase of stellar evolution
White dwarf
what stars like the Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel
Main-sequence star
any star that has a hot, dense core which fuses hydrogen into helium to produce energy
Supernova
a powerful and luminous explosion of a star
Black hole
a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape its event horizon
Parallax
the apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object
Light-year
the distance light travels in one year
Polaris
northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor
