Home > Terms > English (EN) > stars

stars

Are mostly suns, but being, the nearest of them, at a distance from us more than 500,000 times our distance from the sun, are of a size we cannot estimate, but are believed to be 300 times larger than the earth; they are of unequal brightness, and are, according to this standard, classified as of the first, second, down to the sixteenth magnitude; those visible to the naked eye include stars from the first to the sixth magnitude, and number 3000, while 20,000,000 are visible by the telescope; of these in the Milky Way alone there are 18,000,000; they are distinguished by their colors as well as their brightness, being white, orange, red, green, and blue according to their temperature and composition; they have from ancient date been grouped into constellations of the northern and the southern hemispheres and of the zodiac, the stars in each of which being noted by the Greek letters, as (Greek: alpha), (Greek: beta), according to their brightness; they all move more or less, and some go round each other, and are called double according as there are two or more of them so revolving; besides stars singly visible there are others called clusters or nebulae.

0
Collect to Blossary

Member comments

You have to log in to post to discussions.

Terms in the News

Billy Morgan

Sports; Snowboarding

The British snowboarder Billy Morgan has landed the sport’s first ever 1800 quadruple cork. The rider, who represented Great Britain in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, was in Livigno, Italy, when he achieved the man-oeuvre. It involves flipping four times, while body also spins with five complete rotations on a sideways or downward-facing axis. The trick ...

Marzieh Afkham

Broadcasting & receiving; News

Marzieh Afkham, who is the country’s first foreign ministry spokeswoman, will head a mission in east Asia, the state news agency reported. It is not clear to which country she will be posted as her appointment has yet to be announced officially. Afkham will only be the second female ambassador Iran has had. Under the last shah’s rule, Mehrangiz Dolatshahi, a ...

Weekly Packet

Language; Online services; Slang; Internet

Weekly Packet or "Paquete Semanal" as it is known in Cuba is a term used by Cubans to describe the information that is gathered from the internet outside of Cuba and saved onto hard drives to be transported into Cuba itself. Weekly Packets are then sold to Cuban's without internet access, allowing them to obtain information just days - and sometimes hours - after it ...

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

Banking; Investment banking

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is an international financial institution established to address the need in Asia for infrastructure development. According to the Asian Development Bank, Asia needs $800 billion each year for roads, ports, power plants or other infrastructure projects before 2020. Originally proposed by China in 2013, a signing ...

Spartan

Online services; Internet

Spartan is the codename given to the new Microsoft Windows 10 browser that will replace Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer. The new browser will be built from the ground up and disregard any code from the IE platform. It has a new rendering engine that is built to be compatible with how the web is written today. The name Spartan is named after the ...

Featured Terms

Silentchapel
  • 0

    Terms

  • 95

    Blossaries

  • 10

    Followers

Industry/Domain: Arts & crafts Category: Oil painting

Dresden Altarpiece

The Dresden Altarpiece is a triptych by German Renaissance artists Albrecht Dürer, executed between 1496 and 1497, and perhaps continued in 1503-1504. ...