PERIHELION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Perihelion

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Perihelion

noun

(pl. perihelia)

Periapsis in solar orbit; the point in the orbit of a planet or comet where it is nearest to the sun.

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Etymology of 'Perihelion'

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"Perihelion" Quotes from Famous Books

... stamp the Morris out, though we are told that Groby and other preachers throughout the land inveighed against it as 'lewde' and 'ungodlie.' The Restoration was in many places celebrated by special Morrises. The perihelion of this dance seems, indeed, to have been in the reign of Charles II. Georgian writers treated it somewhat as a survival, and were not always even tender to it. Says a writer in Bladud's Courier, describing a 'soire'e de beaute'' given by Lady Jersey, ...

— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... see its most attractive shrine of pilgrimage too suddenly eclipsed; and why should you court such an exposure of popular fickleness, when about to become yourself "the comet of a season," and to go through that brilliant perihelion, in which, reversing the feat of Horace with his lofty head, you will sweep away all other stars with a swinge of your luminous caudality? Yes, Godfrey—spare your own feelings, and treat us to another Great Unknown! I am sure such will be your determination, and so I will ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... common rule. An irregularity in the motion of a planet by which it deviates from the aphelion or apogee.—Mean anomaly formerly signified the distance of a planet's mean place from the apogee: it is the angular distance of a planet or comet from perihelion supposing it to have moved with its mean velocity.—True anomaly, the true angular distance of a planet or comet from perihelion. (See EXCENTRIC ...

— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

Words linked to "Perihelion" : periapsis, point of periapsis, aphelion