- Industry: Aerospace
- Number of terms: 16933
- Number of blossaries: 2
- Company Profile:
The Executive Branch agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's civilian space program and aeronautics and aerospace research.
The emission of electromagnetic radiation as the result of exposure to some other radiation, which emission ceases when the stimulus that produces it ceases to act on the emitting substance. Thus light passing through a gas, may change the energy state of the atoms and cause them to emit light of a different wavelength.
Industry:Astronomy
An ideal or imaginary body that is absolutely black when cold, but is a perfect absorber of radiation and at the same time a perfect radiator. Black body temperatures are used to work out the theoretical laws of radiation and to calculate the temperature of the sun.
Industry:Astronomy
A gas used by all green plants and recycled by them to form wood and the oxygen we breathe. In very large quantities it can be poisonous to animal life.
Industry:Astronomy
The great circle of the celestial sphere all points of which are 90 degrees from the poles. It is the plane of the earth's equator projected onto the celestial sphere.
Industry:Astronomy
A great circle of the celestial sphere passing through the celestial poles and a celestial body or the vernal equinox. An hour circle moves with the body as the celestial sphere rotates, unlike the celestial meridian of a point that remains fixed.
Industry:Astronomy
The phase when more than half (but not all) of the planet's side facing earth is illuminated by the sun.
Industry:Astronomy
The study of the size and shape of earth, the measurement of terrestrial gravitational forces, and the location of fixed points on earth's surface.
Industry:Astronomy
The speed that any object must acquire in order to escape from a planet's gravitation.
Industry:Astronomy
The degree of flattening of an ellipse and how much it deviates from a circular shape. With reference to the orbit of a planet, the distance between the center of its orbit and the center of the primary about which it revolves.
Industry:Astronomy
The apparent daily rotation of the heavens from east to west; an effect of earth's rotation about its axis.
Industry:Astronomy
