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Solstitial Colure
Colure, in astronomy, is either of the two principal meridians of the celestial sphere. Equinoctial colure The ''equinoctial colure'' is the meridian or great circle of the celestial sphere which passes through the celestial poles and the two equinoxes: the first point of Aries and the first point of Libra. Solstitial colure The ''solstitial colure'' is the meridian or great circle of the celestial sphere which passes through the poles and the two solstices: the first point of Cancer and the first point of Capricorn. There are several stars closely aligned with the solstitial colure: Pi Herculis, Delta Aurigae, and Theta Scorpii. This makes the solstitial colure point towards the North Celestial Pole and Polaris. See also * Celestial coordinate system * Ecliptic * Celestial sphere * Right ascension * Equinox * Solstice A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the cele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colure
Colure, in astronomy, is either of the two principal meridians of the celestial sphere. Equinoctial colure The ''equinoctial colure'' is the meridian or great circle of the celestial sphere which passes through the celestial poles and the two equinoxes: the first point of Aries and the first point of Libra. Solstitial colure The ''solstitial colure'' is the meridian or great circle of the celestial sphere which passes through the poles and the two solstices: the first point of Cancer and the first point of Capricorn. There are several stars closely aligned with the solstitial colure: Pi Herculis, Delta Aurigae, and Theta Scorpii. This makes the solstitial colure point towards the North Celestial Pole and Polaris. See also * Celestial coordinate system * Ecliptic * Celestial sphere * Right ascension * Equinox * Solstice A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pi Herculis
Pi Herculis (π Her, π Herculis) is a third-magnitude star in the constellation Hercules. As one of the four stars in the Keystone asterism (see yellow quadrangle), it is one of the constellation's more easily recognized. It has an apparent visual magnitude of +3.2, which is visible to the naked eye and makes it one of its brighter members. The Hipparcos satellite mission estimated its distance at roughly 115 parsecs from Earth, or about 377 light years away. The overall reduction in the star's visual magnitude due to extinction from the intervening matter is 0.11. Properties Pi Herculis is a bright giant star with a stellar classification of K3 II. P.C. Keenan and R. E. Pitts (1980) graded it as a spectral type K3 IIab and it is sometimes listed with this alternate classification. The star is enormous compared to the Sun, having a mass that is 4.5 times solar and a radius approximately 60 times depending on which wavelength the star's angular diamete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial support of Charles Scribner, as a printing press to serve the Princeton community in 1905. Its distinctive building was constructed in 1911 on William Street in Princeton. Its first book was a new 1912 edition of John Witherspoon's ''Lectures on Moral Philosophy.'' History Princeton University Press was founded in 1905 by a recent Princeton graduate, Whitney Darrow, with financial support from another Princetonian, Charles Scribner II. Darrow and Scribner purchased the equipment and assumed the operations of two already existing local publishers, that of the ''Princeton Alumni Weekly'' and the Princeton Press. The new press printed both local newspapers, university documents, ''The Daily Princetonian'', and later added book publishing to it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. One of its quasi-independent projects is the BiblioVault, a digital repository for scholarly books. The Press building is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. History The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum''. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900 the University of Chicago Press had published 127 books and pamphlets and 11 scholarly journals, includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solstice
A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countries, the seasons of the year are determined by the solstices and the equinoxes. The term ''solstice'' can also be used in a broader sense, as the day when this occurs. The day of a solstice in either hemisphere has either the most sunlight of the year ( summer solstice) or the least sunlight of the year (winter solstice) for any place other than the Equator. Alternative terms, with no ambiguity as to which hemisphere is the context, are " June solstice" and " December solstice", referring to the months in which they take place every year. The word ''solstice'' is derived from the Latin ''sol'' ("sun") and ''sistere'' ("to stand still"), because at the solstices, the Sun's declination appears to "stand still"; that is, the seasonal move ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equinox
A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and set "due west". This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September. More precisely, an equinox is traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun's disk. Equivalently, this is the moment when Earth's rotation axis is directly perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line, tilting neither toward nor away from the Sun. In modern times, since the Moon (and to a lesser extent the planets) causes Earth's orbit to vary slightly from a perfect ellipse, the equinox is officially defined by the Sun's more regular ecliptic longitude rather than by its declination. The instants of the equinoxes are currently defined to be when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Right Ascension
Right ascension (abbreviated RA; symbol ) is the angular distance of a particular point measured eastward along the celestial equator from the Sun at the March equinox to the (hour circle of the) point in question above the earth. When paired with declination, these astronomical coordinates specify the location of a point on the celestial sphere in the equatorial coordinate system. An old term, ''right ascension'' ( la, ascensio recta), "''Ascensio recta'' Solis, stellæ, aut alterius cujusdam signi, est gradus æquatorus cum quo simul exoritur in sphæra recta"; roughly translated, "''Right ascension'' of the Sun, stars, or any other sign, is the degree of the equator that rises together in a right sphere" refers to the ''ascension'', or the point on the celestial equator that rises with any celestial object as seen from Earth's equator, where the celestial equator intersects the horizon at a right angle. It contrasts with ''oblique ascension'', the point on the celestial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Celestial Sphere
In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, which may be centered on Earth or the observer. If centered on the observer, half of the sphere would resemble a hemispherical screen over the observing location. The celestial sphere is a conceptual tool used in spherical astronomy to specify the position of an object in the sky without consideration of its linear distance from the observer. The celestial equator divides the celestial sphere into northern and southern hemispheres. Introduction Because astronomical objects are at such remote distances, casual observation of the sky offers no information on their actual distances. All celestial objects seem equally far away, as if fixed onto the inside of a sphere with a large but unknown radius, which appears to rotate westward o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecliptic
The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic against the background of stars. The ecliptic is an important reference plane and is the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system. Sun's apparent motion The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun throughout the course of a year. Because Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun takes one year to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in one year, the Sun moves a little less than 1° eastward every day. This small difference in the Sun's position against the stars causes any particular spot on Earth's surface to catch up with (and stand directly north or south of) the Sun about four minutes later each day than it would if Earth did not orbit; a day on Earth is therefore 24 hours ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Celestial Coordinate System
Astronomical coordinate systems are organized arrangements for specifying positions of satellites, planets, stars, galaxies, and other celestial objects relative to physical reference points available to a situated observer (e.g. the true horizon and north cardinal direction to an observer situated on the Earth's surface). Coordinate systems in astronomy can specify an object's position in three-dimensional space or plot merely its direction on a celestial sphere, if the object's distance is unknown or trivial. Spherical coordinates, projected on the celestial sphere, are analogous to the geographic coordinate system used on the surface of Earth. These differ in their choice of fundamental plane, which divides the celestial sphere into two equal hemispheres along a great circle. Rectangular coordinates, in appropriate units, have the same fundamental () plane and primary (-axis) direction, such as a rotation axis. Each coordinate system is named after its choice of fundamental ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theta Scorpii
Theta Scorpii (θ Scorpii, abbreviated Theta Sco, θ Sco) is a binary star in the southern zodiac constellation of Scorpius. The apparent visual magnitude of this star is +1.87, making it readily visible to the naked eye and one of the brightest stars in the night sky. It is sufficiently near that the distance can be measured directly using the parallax technique and such measurements obtained during the ''Hipparcos'' mission yield an estimate of approximately from the Sun. The two components are designated θ Scorpii A (officially named Sargas , the traditional name for the system) and B. Nomenclature ''θ Scorpii'' ( Latinised to ''Theta Scorpii'') is the system's Bayer designation. The designations of the two components as ''Theta Scorpii A'' and ''B'' derive from the convention used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) for multiple star systems, and adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It bore the traditional name ''Sargas'', of Sumerian orig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delta Aurigae
Delta Aurigae, Latinized from δ Aurigae, is the Bayer designation for an astrometric binary star in the northern constellation of Auriga. It is visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 3.715. Based upon its annual parallax shift of , it is some distant from the Earth, give or take a three light-year margin of error. It is drifting further away with a radial velocity of +10 km/s. This star is the namesake for the Delta Aurigids, a meteor shower that occurs between October 6–15. The radiant point for this shower passes several degrees to the south of the star. The variable radial velocity of this system was not recognized until 1999, more than a century following the first measurement in 1897. Delta Aurigae is a single-lined spectroscopic binary: periodic Doppler shifts in the star's spectrum indicate orbital motion. The pair have an orbital period of and an eccentricity of 0.231. Based on the small amplitude of the radial velocity variation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
