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Nebula   Listen
noun
Nebula  n.  (pl. nebulae)  
1.
(Astron.) A faint, cloudlike, self-luminous mass of matter situated beyond the solar system among the stars. The term was originally applied to any diffuse luminous region. Now, technically, it is applied to interstellar clouds of dust and gases (diffuse nebula). However distant galaxies and very distant star clusters often appear like them in the telescope, such as the spiral nebula in Andromeda, known now to be a distant galaxy.
2.
(Med.)
(a)
A white spot or a slight opacity of the cornea.
(b)
A cloudy appearance in the urine. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nebula" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Atlas. But all these troubles were removed when I knew my brother to be at no great distance, making observations with his various instruments on double stars, planets, and the like; and I could have his assistance immediately when I found a nebula, or cluster of stars, of which I intended to give a catalogue. I had the comfort to see," she continues, "that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours to assist him when he wanted another person either to run ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous

... account now generally accepted, the original material of the earth seems to have been a semi-solid or semi-fluid mass formed by the condensation of the still more fluid or even gaseous nebula out of which all the planets of the solar system have been formed and of which the sun is the still fiery core. As soon as the earth had cooled sufficiently its substances crystallized and wrinkled to form the first mountains and ridges; between and ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... I saw the dark nebula—at first, an impalpable cloud, away to my right. It grew, steadily, to a clot of blackness in the night. How long I watched, it is impossible to say; for time, as we count it, was a thing of the past. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... example, express the idea of successive impulses, mounting, attaining a maximum, and descending—expanding from some focus of force in the manner universal throughout nature. Science recognizes in the spiral an archetypal form, whether found in a whirlpool or in a nebula. A fret is a series of highly conventionalized spirals: translate it from angular to curved and we have the wave-band; isolate it and we have the volute. Egg and dart are phallic emblems, female and male; or, if you prefer, as ellipse and straight ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... say so, but I fancy Ooma may have been undergoing readjustment.—My dear, she has grown as pudgy as a Jupitan, and her clothes—but then she always did look more like a spiral nebula than ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... inquirers—arguing from the 'nebular theory,' which assumes the formation of the several planets, one after another, from nebulous matter—have supposed the zodiacal light to be a remnant of that matter yet unconcentrated. In this view, it may be a nebula, brightest in the centre, as is the case with most, and fainter towards the margin. According to Humboldt, 'we may with great probability attribute the zodiacal light to the existence of an extremely oblate ring of nebulous matter, revolving freely in space between the orbits of Venus and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... bold relief upon the terminator, even some of the craters and cones of the moon. Indeed, I am of opinion I can see even more than he could, for I can readily make out a considerable portion of the Great Nebula in Orion, some double stars, and enough of the Saturnian system to discern the disk of the planet and see that there is something attached to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various

... winter of Chili being at the same time with the Spanish summer, and vice versa. The pole seen from that country, which is directly opposite our Arctic or north pole, is only marked by a kind of small white cloud or nebula, which is seen after sunset in that direction in which astronomers have placed the antartic or south pole. There is likewise seen a constellation of seven stars, four of them being in form of a cross, followed by three others, resembling the lesser bear of the astronomers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... accepted that to-day it is little more assailed than the doctrine of gravitation. And yet, while the average man of intelligence bows to the formula that all which now exists has come from the simplest conceivable state of things,—a universal nebula, if you will,—in his secret soul he makes one exception—himself. That there is a great deal more assent than conviction in the world is a chiding which may come as justly from the teacher's table as from the preacher's pulpit. Now, if we but catch the meaning of man's mastery of electricity, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... him the Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, or other light works. At length, after repeated failures, he found himself provided with a reflecting telescope—a 5-1/2-foot Gregorian—of his own construction. A copy of his first observation with it, on the great Nebula in Orion—an object of continual amazement and assiduous inquiry to him—is preserved by the Royal Society. It bears the date ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... of the latest theories of the birth and death of worlds. From fire-mist, says the modern astronomer, they were condensed, and to fire-mist, by collisions or otherwise, they will return. What the particular stages may be, what the significance of the nebula;, what the cosmic functions of electricity, and other like problems—may be, and will be, matter for keen debate. But the grand generalisation remains—from fire-mist back again to fire-mist. How modern, also, the grand unity which such a theory gives ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... not where to turn for bread, or on whom to pour his rage—beheld suddenly, in a quiet, half-built street, which led from the suburb to the New Road, Arabella Crane standing right in his path. She had emerged from one of the many straight intersecting roads which characterise that crude nebula of a future city; and the woman and the man met thus face to face; not another passer-by visible in the thoroughfare;—at a distance the dozing hack cab-stand; round and about them carcases of brick and mortar—some with gaunt scaffolding fixed into their ribs, and all looking yet more ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... States was founded, is justly celebrated for its astronomical staff. There are to be found assembled all the most eminent men of science. Here is to be seen at work that powerful telescope which enabled Bond to resolve the nebula of Andromeda, and Clarke to discover the satellite of Sirius. This celebrated institution fully justified on all points the confidence reposed in it by the Gun Club. So, after two days, the reply so impatiently awaited was placed in the hands of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... and unsettled, attached to the one instinct of living: a series of habits of our sensibility and of conscious or unconscious reactions against the surrounding phenomena. When all is said, the most steadfast point of that nebula is our memory, which seems, on the other hand, to be a somewhat external, a somewhat accessory faculty and, in any case, one of the frailest faculties of our brain, one of those which disappear the most promptly at the least disturbance of our health. "As an English poet has ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck

... of: Alumna, analysis, beau, cherub, crisis, curriculum, genus, genius, hypothesis, nebula, oasis, parenthesis, phenomenon, synopsis, seraph, stratum, tableau. 2. Write the singular of: Alumni, curricula, data, bacteria, cherubim, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler

... said. "That's it! That Lick photograph of the Lord Rosse Nebula is its very image, except that there's no electric fire in it. The same great whirl of outer spirals, and then comes the awful central mass—and we're going to plunge straight into it. Then quintillions of tons of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... its baleful effect. As before, the body commenced to expand and gradually took on a misty outline. Larger and larger it grew, until finally it had become a vast cloud of intangible nothingness which filled the room like some evil nebula. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... successful in celestial photography is no doubtful sign of the great value attached to such work. Last year it was Mr. Common who received the highest testimony of the merit due to his splendid photographs of the nebula of Orion; and this year Dr. Huggins, who has drawn much attention to celestial photography, by his successful attempts to picture the solar corona in full daylight, has received a similar acknowledgment of his labors in photographing the spectra of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... to the right appeared a faint point of flame, which grew larger. It was approaching, and he dispassionately viewed it; and when he looked again for the two, they were gone, and in their places were two clouds of nebula, which resolved into myriad points of sparkling light and color—whirling, encroaching, until they filled all space. And through them the larger light was ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... illusion of the senses would make the stars stationary in the vault of heaven, Astronomy, by her aspiring labors, has assigned indefinite bounds to space; and if she have set limits to the great nebula to which our solar system belongs, it has only been to show us in those remote regions of our optic powers, islet on islet of scattered nebulae. The feeling of the sublime, so far as it arises from a contemplation of the distance of the stars, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... hortis Hesperidum beatiora longo Ianiculi iugo recumbunt: lati collibus imminent recessus et planus modico tumore vertex caelo perfruitur sereniore et curvas nebula tegente valles solus luce nitet peculiari: puris leniter admoventur astris celsae culmina delicata villae. hinc septem dominos videre montes et totam licet aestimare Romam, Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles et quodcumque iacet sub urbe frigus ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... id quod quisque potest et valet edit, ferro ferit, tela frangunt, boat caelum fremitu virum, ex spiritu atque anhelitu nebula constat, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... conceived as the primal existence. Forth from Brahma emanated, as heat and light emanate from the sun, all things and all life. Banish a personal God from the universe, as some modern scientists would do, leaving nothing but nature with her original nebula, her endless cycles, her unconscious evolutions, and we have something ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... at last. Dear heart! take it sadly home to thee, there is no cooeperation. We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitring and recruiting of the holy fraternity that shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... honey" of French decadents and symbolists has attracted one party; and the others are being swallowed up in the pessimistic nebula of "mystic anarchy" and fatalism. "Russian pity" suffuses their work. There is without doubt a national sentiment and a revolt against western European culture, particularly the French. Russia for the Russians ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... inevitable attack upon us enters naturally at this point; because, while the average mind is willing enough to grant some sort of vague omnipresent "will to evolve" to the primordial "nebula" and even prepared to allow it such obscure consciousness as is implied in the phrase "life-force" or "elan vital," it is startled and shocked to a supreme degree when we assert that such "nebula," if it existed, was the outward body or form of a living "soul-monad" possessed, even as human beings ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... his pen: The Moon Maiden (1915) and The Second Deluge (1911). The former is a scientific mystery, and probably the least distinguished of his works. The latter, conversely, is probably his best. It tells of a watery nebula which collides with the earth, flooding it with a second deluge; and of how the human race is saved through the wisdom of one man who foresaw the coming disaster in time to build a second ark. A new civilization which ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... cumulostratus; cirrocumulus; mackerel sky, mare's tale, dirty sky; curl cloud; frost smoke; thunderhead. [Science of clouds] nephelognosy[obs3]; nephograph[obs3], nephology[obs3]. effervescence, fermentation; bubbling &c. v. nebula; cloudliness &c. (opacity) 426[obs3]; nebulosity &c. (dimness) 422. V. bubble, boil, foam, froth, mantle, sparkle, guggle[obs3], gurgle; effervesce, ferment, fizzle. Adj. bubbling &c. v.; frothy, nappy[obs3], effervescent, sparkling, mousseux[French: frothy], up. cloudy &c. n.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... chilling air that ran across my frame and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, 'This would never do for Mr. Barlow!' After the curtain drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow's considering the costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In the clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unaccountable creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in intellect, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... messenger, rack, nimbus; cumulus, woolpack^, cirrus, stratus; cirrostratus, cumulostratus; cirrocumulus; mackerel sky, mare's tale, dirty sky; curl cloud; frost smoke; thunderhead. [Science of clouds] nephelognosy^; nephograph^, nephology^. effervescence, fermentation; bubbling &c v.. nebula; cloudliness &c (opacity) 426 [Obs.]; nebulosity &c (dimness) 422. V. bubble, boil, foam, froth, mantle, sparkle, guggle^, gurgle; effervesce, ferment, fizzle. Adj. bubbling &c v.; frothy, nappy^, effervescent, sparkling, mousseux ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... window of glass, brightly, but as through a telescope-glass, darkly. Your cathedral window shut you from the true sky, and illumined you with a vision; your telescope leads you to the sky, but darkens its light, and reveals nebula beyond nebula, far and farther, and to no conceivable farthest—unresolvable. That ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... twenty-four hours, man's existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few more seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time will stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into something, and be comes nebula once more. God's hands haven't been particularly full, sir, have they— two seconds out of twenty-four hours—if man is ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... have not a symmetrical form, as they appear to have in inferior instruments; for instance, Fig. 81 is a cluster with long resolvable filaments from its southern extremity, and Fig. 85 is an oblong cluster with a bright centre. Fig. 45 is an annular nebula, like Herschel's drawing of the annular nebula in Lyra. I have sent drawings of a few of these objects to the Royal Society, they were forwarded a few days ago. We have upon the whole as yet observed but little with the telescope of 3 feet aperture. You recollect ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... kind. It was from one-twentieth to one-thirtieth of an inch in diameter. Its surface was marked with twelve distinct patches, or nebulae, of dots of a brownish colour. These dots were disposed in pairs, four pairs or sixteen pairs alternately, composing one of the nebula. The body of the medusa was transparent. When the water containing these animals was heated, it emitted a very strong odour, in some respects resembling the smell of oysters when thrown on hot coals, but ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... destined to take its place among the other stars as a permanent member of the universe. Instead of this, such objects invariably fade away after a few months, and are changed into something very like an ordinary nebula. A question of transcendent interest is that of the cause of these outbursts. It cannot be said that science has, up to the present time, been able to offer any suggestion not open to question. The most definite one is the collision theory, ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... on up the hill to Charlotte Barnard's. The spring was advancing. All the trees were full of that green nebula of life which comes before the blossom. Little wings, bearing birds and songs, cut the air. A bluebird shone on a glistening fence-rail, like a jewel on a turned hand. Over across the fields red oxen were moving down plough-ridges, the green grass was springing, the air was full of that ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... out of my mother, generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long, slow strata piled to rest it in, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... datum erratum focus formula genus larva medium memorandum nebula radius series species ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... roll on, devoid of all life, so the loss of water and air will then be of no consequence. It will be a dead world; until, perhaps aeons hence, a collision with some other large body may transform both into a nebula; and thus once more start them on the way to develop into a world capable of sustaining life. Thus nothing in the Universe really dies; the apparent death is only the preparation for a newer ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... him." [6] Indeed, how could the universe "love" one of {51} its mere passing phases? Is it a wonder that this cheerless creed has "increasingly repelled rather than attracted religious people" when once they have understood its inwardness? We ask for bread and receive—a nebula; we call for our Father, and are told to content ourselves ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... transported, as observers, from our tiny planet to the confines of our solar system, and, gazing thence still farther toward infinity, we watch with bated breath the birth, the progress, and the death of worlds. To one of the most distant objects in the depths of space, known as the Ring Nebula, the ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... Description of the Nebula in Orion, as forced to show out by Lord Rosse.—You see a head thrown back, and raising its face, (or eyes, if eyes it had,) in the very anguish of hatred, to some unknown heavens. What should be its skull wears what might ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... 380 Homely and wholesome, suited to the time, With rod or candy for child-minded men: No theologic tube, with lens on lens Of syllogism transparent, brings it near,— At best resolving some new nebula, Or blurring some fixed-star of hope to mist. Science was Faith once; Faith were Science now, Would she but lay her bow and arrows by And arm her with the weapons of the time. Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from thought. 390 For there's no virgin-fort but self-respect, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Ducat dukato. Duchess dukino. Duchy duklando. Duck anasino. Ducking trempado. Duct tubo. Ductile etendebla. Dude dando. Duel duelo. Duet dueto. Duke duko. Dukedom (duchy) duklando. Dull (unpolished) malbrila. Dull (sombre) malhela, nebula. Dull (stupid) malklera. Dull (blunt) malakra. Dumb muta. Dumbness muteco. Dumb show pantomimo. Dunce malklerulo. Dung sterko. Dungheap sterkajxo. Dungeon malliberejo. Dupe trompi. Duplicate duobligi. Duplicity trompemo. Durable fortika. Duration dauxro. During ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... any earlier period, that most of the planets possess special characteristics which distinguish them from one another, and that such an origin as Laplace suggested—the slow cooling and contraction of one vast sun-mist or nebula, besides presenting inherent difficulties—many think them impossibilities—in itself does not afford an adequate explanation of these peculiarities. Hence has arisen what is termed the Meteoritic theory, which has been ably advocated for many years by Sir Norman Lockyer, and with some ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Prishvin. Vsevolod Ivanov, another Siberian, is perhaps the most interesting for the subjects he chooses (the Civil War in the backwoods of Siberia), but his style is, though vigorous, diffuse and hazy, and his narrative is lost in a nebula of poetically-produced "atmosphere." ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... "I begin to understand how it was. The shock, the struggle within himself and the revulsion of his conscience from the victory won by the worse side of his nature started up a new center, or threw off a new nebula, of consciousness—we can only vaguely guess at the process. It proved strong enough to form within his brain the embryo ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... are our reference points. Here's Andromeda Galaxy, and the dark nebula, and the arch of our own Milky Way." He pointed to the places he had named on the plates. "Now we can check some of these high magnitude reference stars with ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf

... these worlds, and follow a fleet as it starts for their home nebula. Gradually, as they run, I will fade into invisibility, and they will not know that I have dropped back here to complete the work, but will think I am still following. Probably they will run to some other ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... creaking of country sleds, the sweet jangle of sleighbells. The snow has fallen under a cold temperature, and the flakes are perfectly crystallized; every shrub we pass bears wreaths which glitter as gorgeously as the nebula in the constellation Perseus; but in another hour of sunshine every one of those fragile outlines will disappear, and the white surface glitter no longer with stars, but with star-dust. On such a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... of the Dragon Nebula shed its soft light. That's what made it possible to work after sundown in the spring; at that time of year, the Dragon Nebula was at its brightest during the early part of the evening. The tail of it didn't vanish beneath the horizon until well after midnight. ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett

... without. At the same time, I cannot agree with Meyer and Klein in considering that the cause of the heat was either the downfall of a planetary mass on the star, or the collision of the star with a star-cloudlet, or nebula, traversing space in one direction while the star swept onwards in another. A planet could not very well come into final conflict with its sun at one fell swoop. It would gradually draw nearer and nearer, not by the narrowing of its path, but by the change ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... sunt a Gadibus usque Auroram et Gangem, pauci dignoscere possunt Vera bona, atque illis multum diversa, remota Erroris nebula...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... softened strains of wind-blown music, and saw a cloud of lancers moving, the sun glowing with a subdued light upon the massed armor, but striking bright upon the soaring lance-heads—a vaguely luminous nebula, so to speak, with a constellation twinkling above it—and that was our guard of honor. It joined us, the procession was complete, the first war-march of Joan of Arc was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... with their planet. As for the cloudy atmosphere, they could have developed some system of radio or radar investigation of the universe. The Navy research units, I knew, were probing the far-off Crab nebula in the Milky Way with special radio devices. This same method, or something far superior, could have been developed on Venus, or other planets ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... enticing companionship. A "chaperon" did duty at the Astor when Juno was in the city, which was not often. Consequently, Juno's ideas of domestic felicity were not wholly edifying; her conception of anything pertaining to home life about as hazy as the nebula. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... with a perfect nebula of gentlemen around her. Possibly this court would have given more pleasure to most other women, but, at all events, the effect was very striking. The gentle Liebold's face wore a continual smile of delight, which he was obliged to suppress, as well as he could, from the fear of being supposed ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... grim, drew off into little groups, and into the saloons and gambling halls of the town. And when the blizzard was spent, and the cold stars were dropping their frozen light, these dull-witted things began to move, slowly at first, circling about like a great forming nebula, but gaining momentum and power with each revolution. More than a thousand strong, they circled out into the frozen streets of the little town, and up along the main thoroughfare. Their dull murmurs slowly gained volume. Their low curses welled ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... is made up of the same chemical materials as those with which we are familiar upon the earth. A part of the dazzling brilliance of the noonday sun is due to the vapor of iron floating in his atmosphere, and the faint luminosity of the remotest cloudlike nebula is the glow of just such hydrogen as enters into every drop of ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre;" when man with all his achievements and triumphs, his love and laughter, his songs and sighs, is forgotten even more completely than his Paleolithic ancestors; then, shall some portion of the nebula which now bejewels Andromeda's girdle become evolutionized into a flora and a fauna, a civilization and a spirituality unto which the visions of the wisest seers have never attained? Shall this subtle, evanescent mystery which we ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... gentleman continued to eye me loftily, as the heir-apparent to some celestial planet might eye an inferior creature from a half-formed nebula suddenly dropped upon ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the different elements already distinguished by common-sense. He thought the unity of nature to consist in its periodic evolution from and return into one infinite sum of material (to apeiron), which, much in the manner of the "nebula" of modern science, is conceived as both indeterminate in its actual state and infinitely rich in its potentiality. The conception of matter, the most familiar commonplace of science, begins to be recognizable. It has here reached the point of signifying a common substance ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... toward the sky, and hands, as if in ejaculation, were waved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatal blurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. The approaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered, the size of a shield, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from its edges. The faces of the multitude were justified. The mass above us was a train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... nebula of the first quarter of the century had condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period. When, a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the "Saturday Club" gathered about the long table at "Parker's," such a representation of all that was best in American ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... nebula has been formed in the sky and commences to revolve, a little matter in the center where motion is slowest commences to crystallize. When it has reached a certain density it is caught in the swirl, and ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... terram teretibus Quae catervatim coelitus Neque coelorum culmina ...... ...... Grassabatur turbinibus Crebrantur nigris nubibus Carent nocturna nebula—' ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... even most superficially acquainted with the achievements of students of nature during the past few centuries can fail to see that their thought has been astoundingly effective in constantly adding to our knowledge of the universe, from the hugest nebula to the tiniest atom; moreover, this knowledge has been so applied as to well-nigh revolutionize human affairs, and both the knowledge and its applications appear to be no more than hopeful beginnings, with indefinite ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... great smoky cloud which began to rise in the rainy horizon was indeed London. Soon through the thickening nebula of houses they converged to what was then the nucleus of all railway traveling, the Euston Terminus, and were hustled on to the platform, and jostled helplessly to and fro these poor country ladies! Anxiously they scanned the crowd ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... any one will compare it with the somewhat similar anecdote of lynch-law in Balzac's Les Chouans, he ought to recognise the fact—good as that also is. Les Ames du Purgatoire is also "first choice." Of what may be called the satellites of the great Don Juan story—satellites with a nebula instead of a planet for their centre—it is quite the greatest. But of this group La Venus d'Ille is my favourite, perhaps for a rather illegitimate reason. That reason is the possibility of comparing it with Mr. Morris's Ring given to Venus—a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... The nebula which was to form a cluster about the "North American Review" did not take definite shape until 1815. There is no such memorial of the growth of American literature as is to be found in the first half century ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the accidents and hindrances of humanity or man himself, Sir,—the stupendous abortion, the illustrious failure that he is, if the three-hilled city ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... his father's spectacles, is enjoying for the first time a clear and distinct view of the evening sky. "Oh! is that pretty little yellow dot a star?" exclaims the delighted child. Poor innocent! a star had always been to him a dim, cloudy spot, a little nebula, which the magic glass has now resolved; and he can hardly believe that this brilliant point is not an optical illusion. But when his mother assures him that the stars always appear so to her, and he turns ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... here, Mr. Goil. You can see the debris floating down there." I pointed, and Goil looked at the little pin points of light reflecting from a great volume of dust, nebula-like in its dim luminosity. "When the crew starts actual operation, we will turn on the magnification screens and get some close-up views ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell

... unassisted vision. He counted no fewer than forty in the cluster called the Pleiades, or Seven Stars; and he has given us drawings of this constellation, as well as of the belt and sword of Orion, and of the nebula of Praesepe. In the great nebula of the Milky Way, he descried crowds of minute stars; and he concluded that this singular portion of the heavens derived its whiteness from still smaller stars, which his ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... once, a new-born world cohered out of the nebula, and the sight of its measured, orderly whirling dazed him. He had been seized with a wish—almost an intention, so stunning in its audacity that he all but reeled under the shock. It seemed to him that the thing ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... shook his head drearily. Poor man! the world of existence to him seemed to have melted lazily down into a mere nebula, of which the forlorn nucleus was—himself. What a life for any young creature—even his own daughter, to ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... sixteenth magnitude; but on August 17th it brightened to the tenth, showing the principal nebular band in its spectrum, and no sign of approach or recession. It was as if it emerged from one part of the nebula, cooled down, and rushed through another part of the nebula, rendering the nebular ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... only smooth away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITY is unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the worm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet to the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the habitable world, the first law of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... ellipses; erratum, errata; focus, foci: fungus, fungi or funguses; genus, genera; hypothesis, hypotheses; ignis fatuus, ignes fatui; madame, mesdames; magus, magi; memorandum, memoranda or memorandums; monsieur, messieurs; nebula, nebulae; oasis, oases; parenthesis, parentheses; phenomenon, phenomena; radius, radii or radiuses; seraph, seraphim or seraphs; stratum, strata; synopsis, synopses; terminus, termini; vertebra, vertebrae; vortex, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... Anyone who is in possession of a telescope of but moderate power may satisfy himself of its futility on any starlight night. He has only to turn his telescope to one or two of the more conspicuous nebulae; the Great Nebula in Orion, for instance, or the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and his eye will receive light which has not come from any Sun, for it is a well- ascertained fact that these nebulae are nothing but vast masses of incandescent gas. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... comfortably in his chair. "We're sorry you're so busy. We were thinking of going out to see what Antares, Betelguese, or Polaris looked like at close range. And, if we don't get too bored, we might run over to the giant model nebula in Andromeda, or one of the others. Tough about your being busy; you might have helped us by designing the ship and earned your board and passage. Tough." ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... taught that all force is one and eternal, so coordinated throughout the whole universe that whatever affects any atom measurably affects the whole boundless realm of matter and force, to the most distant star or nebula on the dim confines of space; so the ancient sages had discerned and taught that all consciousness is one, immortal, indivisible, infinite; so finely correlated and continuous that whatever is perceived by any consciousness ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... towards every part of the sky, like the equatorials we have recently been considering. The great tube is only capable of elevation in altitude along the meridian, and of a small lateral movement east and west of the meridian. Every star or nebula visible in the latitude of Parsonstown (except those very near the pole) can, however, be observed in the great telescope, if looked for at the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... passed through an experience which is probably unique in all the history of the mighty nebula of which our sun is an infinitesimal part. The chances that one star, surrounded by a system of planets, should pass within a hundred billion miles of another star, similarly accompanied, was one in billions of billions. That both systems should have ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... it sacredly, and loathe To-day's whole content—except you! I loathe it So much that, if I had the dynamite, I'd blow it all—and you and me ourselves— Into a nebula of dust.... Ah, well, We hardly can decide these things to-night, Can we? I must be off, little as I like, To end our ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... who look through a telescope for the first time,—especially if it is directed upon a planet or nebula—is commonly one of disappointment. They have been told that such and such powers will exhibit Jupiter's belts, Saturn's rings, and the continent-outlines on Mars; yet, though perhaps a higher power is applied, they fail to detect these appearances, and can hardly believe that ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... England and looking from the dark waters which divided me from his grave up to the nightly moon and to the stars around her, I could well believe God wasteful of little things. Sirius flashing low, Orion's belt with the great nebula swinging like a pendant of diamonds; the ruby stars, Betelgueux and Aldebaran—my eyes went up beyond these to Perseus shepherding the Kids westward along the Milky way. From the right Andromeda flashed signals to him: and above sat Cassiopeia, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... their purposeless sallies. They clotted on tiles and gutter-pipes, and began frenziedly to build a cell or two of comb ere they discovered that their queen was not with them; then flung off to seek her, or whirled, dishevelled and insane, into another hissing nebula on the false rumour that she was there. I scowled upon them with disfavour, and a massy, blue thunder-head rose majestically from behind the elm-trees of Sumtner Barton Rectory, arched over and scowled with me. Then I realised that it was not bees nor locusts ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... Lockett said, "That'll do." I got out of the chair and walked to the door; my ears were singing and both feet had "gone to sleep." The ambrotype subsequently gave evidence that my last effort to smile had materialized to the extent of being faintly visible, like a far-distant nebula on a clear night. The others always hectored me about that ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... of a tall buffet close under the ceiling. And these bounds of his, together with a way he has of gazing into space with his soulful and enormous yellow eyes, have led to a thousand tales as to his nightly journeyings among the stars; hurting his foot slumping through the nebula in Andromeda; getting his supper at a place in the milky way, hunting all night with Orion, and having awful fights with Sirius. He got his throat cut by alighting on the North Pole one night, coming down from the stars. The reason he slumps through the nebula is on account of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... state that they have procured Daguerreotype impressions of the Nebula of the sword of Orion. Signor Rondini has a secret method of receiving photographic images on lithographic stone; on such a prepared stone they have succeeded in impressing an image of the Nebula and its stars; "and from that stone they have ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling

... our thoughts to the beginning of this solar system to which we belong. We are all familiar with the ordinary astronomical theory of its origin—that which is commonly called the nebular hypothesis—according to which it first came into existence as a gigantic glowing nebula, of a diameter far exceeding that of the orbit of even the outermost of the planets, and then, as in the course of countless ages that enormous sphere gradually cooled and contracted, the system as ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... solid, at another it is fluid, at another it is a visible vapor, at a still higher it is an invisible vapor that burns like a flame. All possible shades of color lurk in a colorless ray of light. A little more or a little less heat makes all the difference between a nebula and a sun, and between a sun and a planet. At one degree of heat the elements are dissociated; at a lower degree they are united. At one point in the scale of temperatures life appears; at another it disappears. With heat enough the earth ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... was done, What crude beginnings out of chaos came - A formless nebula, a wavering flame, An errant ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... in the fierce glare of the ship's search-light, and from it, at irregular intervals, came the warning toll of a heavy bell. It was the bell-buoy at the entrance to Key West harbor, and far away on the southeastern horizon appeared a faintly luminous nebula which marked the position of Key West city. Under the war regulations then in force, no vessels other than those belonging to the United States navy were permitted to enter or leave the port of Key West between late evening twilight and early dawn, and we were, therefore, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... yielded to the claim of the doodwallah to be reckoned among the nowkers. His right is more than doubtful, and I will yield no further. Nevertheless, there is a cluster of petty dependents, a nebula of minor satellites, which have us for the focus of their orbit, and which cannot be left out of a comprehensive account of our system. Whence, for example, is that raucus stridulation which sets every tooth on edge and sends a rheumatic shiver up my spine? ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... from his Journal No. 1, now at the rooms of the Royal Society, may be seen a copy of his first observation of the Nebula of Orion, on March 4, 1774. This was made ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... Pointers. In the northwest, fairly high up, we find Cassiopeia, the Seated Lady, and on her right, lower down, the inconspicuous constellation Cephius. Andromeda, the Chained Lady, is on Cassiopeia's left. The Great Nebula will be noticed in the map—it is faintly visible to the naked eye. Above Andromeda is Perseus, the Rescuing Knight, and above him the Charioteer (Auriga), nearly overhead. On the left of Andromeda ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor

... cluster the bed of the Galaxy is strangely disturbed, and in places nearly denuded, as if its contents had been raked away to form the immense stack and the smaller accumulations of stars around it. The well-known "Trifid Nebula'' is also included in the field of the photograph, which covers a truly marvelous region, so intricate in its mingling of nebul, star-clusters, star-swarms, star-streams, and dark vacancies that no description can do it justice. Yet, chaotic as it appears, there ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... the universe but one of many suns—one of the countless stars in that enormous starry wreath that surrounds us, and which we call the Milky Way. And we direct our telescopes to this Milky Way and find that what we took for nebula is for the most part an accumulation of countless millions of suns, each perhaps with its planets. Then, as we sweep the sky with our glass, we discover numberless little wreath-like spiral cloudlets, and find that they also are just such wreaths of countless millions ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... out of my mother, generations guided me; My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could overlay it, For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long low strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care; All forces have been steadily employ'd ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... a text book on geology one should find stated the view concerning the creation and age of the earth that was held a hundred years ago, and this view gravely put forward as a possible or alternative hypothesis with the current one deducible from the nebula theory, one would be excused for smiling while he turned to the title page to see who in the name of geology should write such stuff. Nevertheless this is precisely similar to what one will find in most treatises on physics for schools and colleges if he turns to the subject of light. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... anthropomorphic conceptions, have never been able to see how stupendous an anachronism they committed (without even taking the trouble to analyse Time) when they placed God prior to His Created Universe in the void and formless Nebula. Such a God would not have been worth the mist He ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... into multitudes of stars. The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed; they now sang paeans to astronomy, because, as they said, it had proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion that all nebula must be alike; that, if SOME are made up of systems of stars, ALL must be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated gaseous matter, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... apparent ease, that they become ours at once, as if they were natural to us. His communication of the most subtle states of mind is complete. But in a Kipling we cannot pretend that there is infinite subtlety and elusiveness, that there is a cosmic condensing of a whole nebula of spiritual experience. His task was ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... definitional place in the dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as "the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval mist," originally pervading the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... of Orion's Sword is a fuzzy light spot. This might do for blood, only it is the wrong color. It is the nebula of Orion. If you can see it with the naked eye, you ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... Physical as apart from natural science made scarcely less advance, and instead of a world created in some fixed moment of time, on which had been placed by some outward agency all the forms and shapes of nature that we know, came the conception of a planet congealing out of a nebula, and of some lower, simpler and primeval form of life multiplying and diversifying itself through succeeding stages of development to form both the animal and the vegetable world. This conception not only enormously excited and stimulated thought, but it gave thinkers a strange sense of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair



Words linked to "Nebula" :   diffuse nebula, nebular, planetary nebula, patch, dapple, spiral nebula, preparation, gaseous nebula, fleck, symptom, nebulous, formulation, cloud



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