General astronomy

General astronomy

Contributors in General astronomy

General astronomy

young neutron star with a strong magnetic field and rapid rotation that produces beams of radiation out of its magnetic poles. If the beams cross our line of sight, we see the star ``pulsate'' (flash ...

Pythagorean paradigm

Astronomy; General astronomy

``common sense'' belief articulated by Pythagoras about the universe that says all objects move in perfectly circular orbits at perfectly uniform speeds and the Earth is at the center of the motions ...

mesophere

Astronomy; General astronomy

layer of a planet's atmosphere above a stratosphere where the temperature decreases with increasing altitude.

metals

Astronomy; General astronomy

what astronomers call all of the elements heavier than helium (like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, aluminum, chlorine, calcium, iron, etc.).

meteor shower

Astronomy; General astronomy

what happens when the Earth passes through the dust trail left by a comet in its orbit. The dust grains are the size of a grain of sand or smaller and produce a large number of meteors in a short ...

meteorite

Astronomy; General astronomy

a small rock from space that makes it to the surface of a planet without burning up in the planet's atmosphere. This distinguishes it from when it is passing through the atmosphere, glowing hot from ...

microlens technique (planet detection)

Astronomy; General astronomy

a method of finding exoplanets by looking for the gravitational lensing effect from a planet orbiting a foreground star added to the gravitational lensing effect of the foreground star on the light ...