Key Terms
- accretion
- the gradual accumulation of mass, as by a planet forming from colliding particles in the solar nebula
- exoplanet
- a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun
- iron meteorite
- a meteorite composed primarily of iron and nickel
- meteor
- a small piece of solid matter that enters Earth’s atmosphere and burns up, popularly called a shooting star because it is seen as a small flash of light
- meteor shower
- many meteors appearing to radiate from one point in the sky; produced when Earth passes through a cometary dust stream
- meteorite
- a portion of a meteor that survives passage through the atmosphere and strikes the ground
- stony meteorite
- a meteorite composed mostly of stony material, either primitive or differentiated
- stony-iron meteorite
- a type of differentiated meteorite that is a blend of nickel-iron and silicate materials
This book was adapted from the following: Fraknoi, A., Morrison, D., & Wolff, S. C. (2016). Key Terms In Astronomy. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/astronomy/pages/14-key-terms under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0
Access the entire book for free at https://openstax.org/books/astronomy/pages/1-introduction
