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sidereal period

(Encyclopedia)sidereal period, in astronomy, length of time a body takes to complete an orbit relative to the fixed stars. See sidereal time. ...

Rubin, Vera

(Encyclopedia)Rubin, Vera, 1928–2016, American astronomer, b. Philadelphia as Vera Florence Cooper, Ph.D. Georgetown (1954). After teaching at Georgetown, she joined (1965) the Carnegie Institution's department o...

apogee

(Encyclopedia)apogee ăpˈəjē [key], point farthest from the earth in the orbit of a body about the earth. See apsis. ...

perigee

(Encyclopedia)perigee pĕrˈĭjē [key], point nearest the earth in the orbit of a body about the earth. See apsis. ...

perihelion

(Encyclopedia)perihelion pĕrˌəhēˈlēən [key], point nearest the sun in the orbit of a body about the sun. See apsis. ...

aphelion

(Encyclopedia)aphelion əfēˈlēən, ăpˌhēˈ– [key], point farthest from the sun in the orbit of a body about the sun. See apsis. ...

Neptune, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)Neptune, in astronomy, 8th planet from the sun at a mean distance of about 2.8 billion mi (4.5 billion km) with an orbit lying between those of Uranus and the dwarf planet Pluto; its period of revolut...

Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna

(Encyclopedia)Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna, 1937–, Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first woman to orbit the earth, in Vostok 6 on June 16–19, 1963. She left the Soviet space program soon after and married c...

space exploration

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Moon mission assembly CE5 Stages in a moon mission shown counterclockwise from launching on the first day to splashdown on the ninth day. space exploration, the investigation of physical co...

space science

(Encyclopedia)space science, body of scientific knowledge as it relates to space exploration; it is sometimes also called astronautics. Space science draws on the conventional sciences of physics, chemistry, biolog...