Stars and Space Exploration Flashcards
Grade 5 · Science · Flashcards
Key vocabulary for stars, stellar life cycles, and major milestones in space exploration.
Flashcards
- Star
- A massive ball of hot plasma held together by gravity; produces energy through nuclear fusion.
- Nuclear fusion
- Hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium in a star's core, releasing enormous amounts of energy.
- Nebula
- A cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars are born.
- Main sequence
- The longest, stable phase of a star's life when it fuses hydrogen fuel.
- Red giant
- A star that has expanded and cooled after exhausting its core hydrogen; a late life-cycle stage.
- White dwarf
- The dense, hot remnant of a medium-mass star after it sheds its outer layers; no longer fusing fuel.
- Supernova
- A massive stellar explosion marking the death of a very large star; briefly outshines entire galaxies.
- Neutron star
- An incredibly dense stellar remnant formed when a massive star collapses after a supernova.
- Black hole
- A region of space with gravity so intense that nothing — not even light — can escape.
- Light-year
- The distance light travels in one year — about 5.88 trillion miles; used to measure distances in space.
- Sputnik
- The first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, starting the Space Age.
- Apollo 11
- The NASA mission that landed the first humans (Armstrong and Aldrin) on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Space telescope launched in 1990 that provided deep-field images of the universe.
- James Webb Space Telescope
- Advanced infrared telescope launched in 2021; can observe the earliest galaxies in the universe.
- Galaxy
- A massive system of billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity; our galaxy is the Milky Way.
- Light
- Electromagnetic radiation produced by nuclear fusion in stars; travels at 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light).
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