A-Z Of The Sky | Page 2 | Vital Football

A-Z Of The Sky

T - THUNDER - well, strictly speaking we don't see it but you know it's coming when you see the lightning!
 
... or Titan, biggest moon of Saturn and second biggest moon in the solar system. Discovered by Huygens back in the 1600's.
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U Uranus - biggish planet in the outer solar system. Visible to the naked eye, if you know where to look. Its axis is tilted to almost 90 degrees, so it looks like it is rolling along around its orbit! One orbit of the Sun takes it about 84 years, and that pathway is quite elliptical. Probably took a bump (or several) in the early history of the solar system. Astronomers have calculated that if it was just one bump, whatever it was that was involved in the collision must have been twice the size of the Earth. Ouch!
 
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Sorry I think I took this off-alphabet!

V Venus - second planet from the sun named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty and also known as Earth's sister planet because it's about the same size.
 
"Wandering star" was an old term used for solar system planets, because they were observed to change position in the night sky, relative to the well-known distant constellations.
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X Xanthe - 411 Xanthe, to give it its full name. Asteroid/minor planet relatively close to us and in the Asteroid belt, just beyond Mars. Discovered in 1896, and although it has been known for a long time, there doesn't seem to be much detailed information about it.
 
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or... (54509) YORP ,a fairly knobbly looking asteroid which is in almost the same orbit as the Earth...and takes roughly the same amount of time to orbit the sun. It is a near-Earth object (NEO) . It's orbit is believed to be in resonance with the Earth's orbit, so it shouldn't crash - which is just as well! We are currently running behind it, but as we get closer it speeds up, then when it has gone round and almost caught us up from behind , it slows down again. This is all due to a series of complex gravitational effects. There is also "Yugoslavia", in the Asteroid belt , that is a wedge-shaped lump of rock. Lots of other asteroids have names starting with "Y".
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Z Zodiacal light - the glow in night sky near horizon just before dawn ("false dawn") or just after sunset , caused by sunlight being scattered by interplanetary dust
 
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