Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Ecliptic   /ɪklˈɪptɪk/   Listen
Ecliptic

noun
1.
The great circle representing the apparent annual path of the sun; the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun; makes an angle of about 23 degrees with the equator.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Ecliptic" Quotes from Famous Books



... little time for Servadac to examine the changes which a few hours had wrought. The sun had already reached the eastern horizon, and just as though it were crossing the ecliptic under the tropics, it sank like a cannon ball into the sea. Without any warning, day gave place to night, and earth, sea, and sky were ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... various directions in space. This, too, is exactly what happens. Unlike planets, whose orbits approximate to one plane, comets have orbits that show no relation to one another; but cut the plane of the ecliptic at all angles, and have axes inclined ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... story without plagiarism. As to Truth being stranger than Fiction, that is all nonsense; it is a proverb set about by Nature to conceal her own want of originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher who assumed her malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the ecliptic; but the truth is, Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to plagiarise from even so humble an individual as myself. Years after I had placed my wicked baronet in his living tomb, she starved to death a hunter in Mexico under precisely ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... nations by the yards of cotton or tons of manufactured iron which they consume for the benefit of Manchester and Sheffield, are certainly as comic as anything in Aristophanes. The madness of the philosopher who deemed himself personally answerable for the obliquity of the ecliptic has more than its match in the sense of responsibility shown by British journalists for the good conduct of the rest of mankind. All other kingdoms, potentates, and powers would seem to be minors or lunatics, and they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... Roger's voice broke in over the intercom. "Three degrees up on the plane of the ecliptic and five ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... order to reach every place, traversing dry countries or extensive seas, it ought then to render the sky serene or stormy. If the influence of the moon on the weather is denied, it is only that it may be referred to its phases, but its position in the ecliptic is regarded as affording probabilities much nearer ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... Brother of the world, his song Sounded like a tempest strong Which tore from oaks their branches broad, And stars from the ecliptic road. Time wore he as his clothing-weeds, He sowed the sun and moon for seeds. As melts the iceberg in the seas, As clouds give rain to the eastern breeze, As snow-banks thaw in April's beam, The solid kingdoms like a dream Resist in vain his motive ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... their rotation in nearly the same time, namely, twenty-four hours. But Jupiter's period is a little less, and Saturn's a little more, than ten hours. Again, Jupiter's axis of rotation is nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, while that of Mars is inclined at an angle of fifty-nine degrees forty-two minutes. Another irregularity, still more fatal to the theory, is found in the number of satellites by which the respective planets are attended. Saturn has seven, beside the two rings; Jupiter has four, ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... which the axis of the earth, in its present state of obliquity, points. It is exceedingly probable, from many considerations, that this obliquity will gradually diminish, until the equator coincides with the ecliptic: the nights and days will then become equal on the earth throughout the year, and probably the seasons also. There is no great extravagance in presuming that the progress of the perpendicularity ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... crossed by other little frozen torrents, the surfaces of which the sun's warmth liquefied, making them smoother and more glittering. But, at the great height at which they stood, all this sparkling brilliance calmed itself; a light floated, cold, ecliptic, which made Tartarin shudder even more than the sense of silence and solitude in that white desert ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet



Words linked to "Ecliptic" :   great circle



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com