Talking about Astronomy: English Vocabulary List

a highly energetic celestial object emitting powerful radiation from the center of a galaxy, often associated with a supermassive black hole

"A quasar is very far away."

"A quasar is an extremely luminous and distant galactic nucleus"

a region beyond Neptune in the solar system containing icy objects like dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets

"The Kuiper belt has many comets."

"The Kuiper Belt is a vast region of the outer solar system containing dwarf planets and icy bodies"

a distant, hypothetical region surrounding the solar system, thought to harbor icy bodies and comets

"The Oort cloud surrounds our solar system."

"The Oort cloud is a theoretical spherical shell of icy objects surrounding our solar system far beyond Pluto."

the apparent displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object when viewed along two different lines of sight, often used in astronomy to measure the distance of nearby stars

"Astronomers use parallax to measure the distance to nearby stars in space."

"Parallax is the apparent shift in an object's position when viewed from different angles"

an exploding star that as a result is emitting a very large amount of light, more than the sun

"A supernova can outshine a galaxy."

"A supernova is the cataclysmic death of a star"

a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation from its magnetic poles

"The pulsar sends regular radio signals."

"Scientists discovered a distant pulsar that rotates several hundred times per second."

the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, extending from the surface up to an average altitude of about 8-15 kilometers

"Weather happens in the troposphere."

"The troposphere contains about eighty percent of the atmosphere's total mass and is where all clouds"

the atmospheric layer above the troposphere, where temperature generally increases with altitude and the ozone layer is situated

"The stratosphere contains the ozone layer."

"The stratosphere is the stable atmospheric layer from ten to fifty kilometers up"

the atmospheric layer above the stratosphere, where temperatures decrease with altitude and it extends up to the mesopause

"Meteors burn in the mesosphere."

"The mesosphere is the atmospheric layer above the stratosphere where temperatures rapidly decrease"

the atmospheric layer above the mesosphere, where temperatures increase with altitude and it extends to the exosphere

"The thermosphere absorbs powerful X-ray radiation from the sun high above Earth."

"The thermosphere is the thick upper atmospheric layer where the International Space Station orbits and where temperatures can soar to over two thousand degrees Celsius."

a layer in the upper atmosphere containing ions and free electrons, affecting radio communication and contributing to auroras

"The ionosphere reflects radio waves back to Earth."

"The ionosphere is a layer of Earth's atmosphere that contains charged particles and reflects radio waves."

the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere, transitioning to outer space, with extremely low gas densities

"The exosphere is the very thin outer edge of our planet's atmosphere."

"The exosphere is the outermost atmospheric layer where particles are so sparse they can travel hundreds of kilometers without colliding"

the protective magnetic field region around a celestial body, shielding it from solar wind and charged particles

"Earth's magnetosphere protects us from the dangerous solar wind coming from space."

"Without the magnetosphere, Earth's atmosphere would gradually disappear into space."