Download Stars - St. Mary School

1. Stars
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Large balls of hot gases
Give off magnetic/thermal radiation
Blue/White stars are the hottest
Red stars are the coolest
Yellow stars have medium temperature
Our Sun is a medium sized star
When stars die they become white dwarfs (the dead core of a
star)
2. Galaxies
Groups of stars that exist in clusters (held together by gravity)
Galaxies come in different shapes and sizes:
 Elliptical (round or egg-shape)
 Spiral (Like a pinwheel)
 Irregular (Not elliptical or spiral)
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is spiral shaped.
3. Constellations
 Made of a group of stars that appear to form pictures in the
night sky
 Myths or stories have been created to explain constellations
4. Our Solar System
The planets in order from the sun are:
The first four are the “Terrestrial Planets”
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
Then the last four are the “Jovian Planets”
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
5 and 6 Facts about Comets, Asteroids, and Meteoroids
Comets:
 Have two long tails that make them visible for long periods
 Lumps of dust and ice
 Some comets return in cycles to our solar system
 Come from deep space to our solar system
 Tails can be millions of miles long
Asteroids:
 Made of rocks
 They form a belt between Mars and Jupiter
 Some are small while others may be thousands of miles long
 They have strange shapes (shapeless)
 Can have craters
 May have formed from an early planet that disintegrated
Meteoroids:
 Pieces of rock, dust or metal floating around in spaces (space
junk)
 Meteors are streaks of light seen in the night sky for a few
seconds (aka Shooting stars)
 As the meteoroid enters our atmosphere it burns up causing a
glow called a meteor
 Meteorites are pieces of meteoroids that survive the trip to
Earth.
 Most meteorites are between the size of a piece of sand or a
pebble.
More notes for chapter 16.
1. Compare and contrast Ursa Major and the Milky Way.
Both Ursa Major and the Milky Way are of stars.
Ursa Major is a constellation that ancient people thought contained a pattern of
stars that looked like a bear.
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy containing billions of stars held together by
gravity.
2. How often does Halley’s Comet revisit Earth?
3. List the planets in order from the Sun.
4. The asteroid belt in our solar system is located between Mars and Jupiter.
Study notes.