"Oblate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miles. The Earth is nearest to the Sun at the end of December, and furthest away at the beginning of July; the difference between those distances is 3,250,000 miles—the extent of the eccentricity of the planet's orbit. The figure of the Earth is that of an oblate spheroid; it is slightly flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. Its polar or shortest diameter is 7,899 miles, its equatorial diameter is 7,926 miles—greater than the other by 27 miles. The circumference ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... been found, "after a violent thunderstorm," in a garden at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a chemist, who could not identify it as true meteoritic material. Whether a product of workmanship like human workmanship or not, this object is described as an oblate spheroid, about two inches across its major diameter. The chemist's name and address are given: Mr. J. James ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... apart, filling up the centre, and [Page 216] extending a few inches on each side of the inner plane of the hoop: an eye in the centre, looking out toward the edge, would see a milky way of lights; looking out toward the sides or poles, would see comparatively few. It would seem as if this oblate spheroidal arrangement was the result of a revolution of all the suns composing the system. Jupiter and earth are flattened at the poles ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... intuitively sensed were not human. They were just a trifle too far away for her to see them distinctly in the waning light of the dying day, but she knew that they were too large, they were out of proportion to the perfectly proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form. She could see that the men wore some manner of harness to which were slung the customary long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian warrior, and that about their short necks were massive leather collars ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... We may as well suppose he created the earth at once, nearly in the state in which we see it, fit for the preservation of the beings he placed on it. But it is said, we have a proof that he did not create it in its present solid form, but in a state of fluidity; because its present shape of an oblate spheroid is precisely that which a fluid mass revolving on its axis ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... tower, though the perpendicular diameter of the form is somewhat less than that, for the organist has evidently finished some minutes ago, and the perfected shape floats high in the air, clearly defined and roughly spherical, though rather an oblate spheroid. This spheroid is hollow, as are all such forms, for it is slowly increasing in size—gradually radiating outward from its centre, but growing proportionately less vivid and more ethereal in appearance as it does so, until at last it loses coherence and fades away much as ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... studying the rims as instructed by Sarka the Second. All about them—and as they watched, activity became apparent on the inner slopes of the craters—winged creatures seemed to be flying. They looked like tiny oblate spheroids, and they were in swift action, darting to and fro like bees which have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... The oblate spheroid assumed an archipelagic formation, melting into irregularly-placed military islands upon ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren |
