Memorize 100 Astronomy Terms: A Glossary from Absolute Magnitude to the Main Sequence

A glossary deck is a different animal from a topic deck: you are not memorizing facts, you are building the vocabulary that makes every other astronomy source readable. Once apsis, albedo and absolute magnitude are automatic, a paper on exoplanet transits stops being a wall of jargon. The Astronomy Terms & Glossary deck (code PT9833 on Flip It) holds 100 definitions. Here is what is inside, and the order that works best.

Two blocks, not one alphabet

Read the deck once before you drill it. Cards 1-78 run in strict alphabetical order and stop at the letter F (First magnitude star). Cards 79-100 then break the alphabet to patch in essentials the A-F range missed: perihelion, parsec, proper motion, photosphere, redshift, right ascension, solar wind, supernova, white dwarf, neutron star, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, main sequence. Treat it as two decks: a deep alphabetical slice plus a 22-card greatest-hits appendix.

You will master, among others: absolute vs apparent magnitude, accretion disk, active galactic nucleus, albedo, aphelion, apoapsis, apogee, ascending and descending nodes, asterism, asteroid belt, astrometry, astronomical unit, axial precession, axial tilt, azimuth, barycenter, blazar, brown dwarf, celestial equator, celestial sphere, centaur, chromosphere, circumstellar disc, clearing the neighbourhood, color index, coronal mass ejection, cosmic microwave background, culmination, debris disk, declination, deep-sky object, degenerate star, diurnal motion, dwarf planet, ecliptic, effective temperature, elliptical galaxy, elongation, ephemeris, equinox, escape velocity, evolutionary track, extinction, facula, radial velocity, spectroscopy, star clusters and stellar evolution.

Ten cards as they appear

Drill the opposites as pairs

The alphabet scatters terms that only make sense together. Aphelion sits at card 6 and perihelion at card 79; apoapsis at 7, periapsis at 80; apogee at 8, perigee at 81; ascending node at 12, descending node at 55. Pull those four pairs out on day one and learn each as one card with two halves: ap- = far, peri- = near, -helion = Sun, -gee = Earth, -apsis = any primary. That single morpheme table replaces eight rote definitions.

Write the missing G-to-O cards yourself

Because the alphabetical block ends at F, the deck has no entry for galaxy, gravitational lensing, Kuiper belt, light-year, luminosity, meteor, Milky Way, nebula, nova, opposition or orbital eccentricity — all standard exam vocabulary. Add a dozen of your own after the first pass; you will remember them better for having written them. A few fronts also keep an encyclopedia disambiguation suffix (Epoch in astronomy, Extinction in astronomy) — harmless, but rename them if the wording throws you.

Comfortable with the objects but not the vocabulary? Pair this deck with our Solar System flashcards guide: the glossary supplies the terms, the Solar System deck supplies the places. Then sign in to Flip It and search the library for Astronomy Terms & Glossary (PT9833).