Asteroid

Astroid

A giant rock, usually orbiting the Sun, floating around in space. An Asteroid belt is a group of Asteroids and a Planetoid is a larger asteroid.

Black Hole

Black Hole

An area with a gravitational pull that sucks anything too close to it

Comet

Comet

A space snowball made of dust, rock and ice that orbits the Sun that have tails when near the Sun.

Galaxy

Galaxy

A large group of stars, gas, clouds of dust and empty spaces that rotates but held together by gravity. The galaxy we live in is called the Milky Way.

Light year

Light year

The distance light travels in one year. It’s the same as 9 trillion km. When things are very far away in space, it’s easier to talk about their distance in light years than millions or billions or trillions of kilometers.

Meteorite

Meteorite

Is a piece of rock that falls onto earth without being destroyed.  The Meteor is the streak of light caused when a meteoroid (piece of rock) enters the atmosphere of a planet and starts to burn from the heat of friction.

Milky Way

Milky Way

Earth and the solar system it belongs to, are all part of this galaxy.

Moon

Moon

A natural object or natural satellite that travels around a bigger natural object. Earth has one moon, while other planets may have many moons. Even Asteroids may have moons.

Nebula

Nebula

A cloud of dust and gas that may give birth to stars.

Orbit

Orbit

The path an object takes around another object while under influence of gravity.

Planet

Planet

A large round object orbiting a star.

Solar system

Solar system

Planets, moons, comets, asteroids and dust that orbit the Sun, held by its gravity.

Star

Star

A huge self-heating and shining ball of glowing gas, made up (mostly) of helium and hydrogen.

Sun

Sun

The star nearest to Earth and the center of our solar system.

Universe

Universe

Everything! Our solar system, all galaxies and things we have not discovered.

* Images: Credit NASA