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Luminosity   Listen
Luminosity

noun
1.
The quality of being luminous; emitting or reflecting light.  Synonyms: brightness, brightness level, light, luminance, luminousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Luminosity" Quotes from Famous Books



... not explain the luminosity of the water. It did not seem to come from reflection of the light of stars or the moon, because the sky was cloudy at the time. The river had a curious greenish tint, closely resembling the light produced by an electric discharge. In ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... bonds to-night. After a while, as it darkened, he rose from the fallen log upon which he had been sitting, and began to follow the little stream, still wrapped in far-away thoughts. The twilight had settled into a night that was moonless, but had that luminosity often seen on clear nights in late autumn. He could see all about him, even in the wood. As he reached another somewhat open space, coming upon it silently from behind a thick growth of underbrush, with ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... and the light was low; the child's face, with its clear fairness, seemed to gleam out in the room like a lamp with a pale luminosity of its own. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... through the network of boughs above them, flinging the ghost of a net about their feet; for they were mounting again to the faint luminosity of the naked night. Flambeau felt truth all round him as an atmosphere, but not as an idea. He answered with bewildered brain: "Well, what's the matter with the sword? Officers generally have swords, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... noting the shape of their spires, the changes of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... magnitude were due principally to the greater distance of the fainter stars, then the brightness of a star would enable us to form a more or less approximate idea of its distance. But the accumulated researches of the past seventy years show that the stars differ so enormously in their actual luminosity that the apparent brightness of a star affords us only a very imperfect indication of its distance. While, in the general average, the brighter stars must be nearer to us than the fainter ones, it by no means follows that a very bright star, even of the first magnitude, is among ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... peculiar potencies of colors, the center and climax of electrical action, which cools the nerves, being in violet; the climax of electrical action, which is soothing to the vascular system, being in blue; the climax of luminosity being in yellow; and the climax of thermism or heat being in red. This is not an imaginary division of qualities, but a real one, the flamelike red color having a principle of warmth in itself; the blue and violet, a principle of cold and electricity. ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... slender with well-balanced fullness. The strong, fine lines of her features were accentuated by the darker more deeply colored complexion which the years had given her; the smile of her widely sweeping lips was very sweet; an almost enigmatical youth in the dewy luminosity of her brown eyes softened and mellowed everything again. And yet she also had the round fullness of cheek, the strong-willed chin ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... the southern horizon of our northern middle latitudes, in summer, where the Milky Way breaks up into vast sheets of nebulous luminosity, lying over and between the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius, there is a remarkable assemblage of "coal-sacks,'' though none is of great size. One of them, near a conspicuous star-cluster in Scorpio, M80, is interesting for having been the first ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... continuing, this red center disappears, and is replaced by a blue center, which gradually expands into a sort of flare over the middle of the disk. The disk itself has in the mean time enlarged into a series of concentric bright rings, graduated in luminosity with beautiful precision from center toward circumference. The outermost ring is considerably brighter, however, than it would be if the same gradation applied to it as applies to the inner rings, and it is surrounded, moreover, on its outer edge by ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... appeared a moving luminosity, having an irregular, dancing motion, as of a will-o'-the-wisp singularly agitated. Sometimes it uplifted itself on high, then plunged downwards, and again jerked itself from side to side; occasionally ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... interpreter. Horace Greeley said that when the rules of the English language got in his way, they did not stand a chance. We may be sure that if by violating the rules of syntax Horace Greeley sometimes added forcefulness to his editorials, he violated them deliberately and not in ignorance. Luminosity is not stumbled into. The richly savored and deliciously unlettered speech of Thomas Hardy's rustics was the creation of a master architect who had looked out over the ranges of fated mankind and looked also into hell. Thomas Hardy's ashes were placed in Westminster Abbey, but his ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... mighty disturbances in the sidereal heavens which entirely negative the idea of "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the phenomena of variable stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of Tycho Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the interstellary spaces, there are ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... displayed as star-dust scattered over the black background of the sky. It was observed that though the individual stars were too small to be seen severally without optical aid, yet such was their incredible number that the celestial radiance produced that luminosity with which every ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... no phenomena associated with fungi that are of greater interest than those which relate to luminosity. The fact that fungi under some conditions are luminous has long been known, since schoolboys in our juvenile days were in the habit of secreting fragments of rotten wood penetrated by mycelium, in order to exhibit their luminous properties in the dark, and thus astonish their more ignorant ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... second place, the name heaven is applied to a body that participates in any property of the heavenly body, as sublimity and luminosity, actual or potential. Thus Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii) holds as one heaven all the space between the waters and the moon's orb, calling it the aerial. According to him, then, there are three heavens, the aerial, the starry, and one higher than both these, of which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... useful undoubtedly in certain cases, as in the Bunsen flame of the laboratory, but not the ideal method of combustion. The ideal method looks to the use of a very rich gas, and the burning of it with a maximum of luminosity. The hot products of combustion must give up their heat by contact. It is for them that cross tubes in boilers are useful. They have no combustion to be interfered with by cold contacts. The flame only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... out by one of the authors to determine some of the figures required in the ensuing table show that ordinary paraffin or "wax" candles usually emit about 20 per cent. more light than that given by the standard spermaceti candle, whose luminosity is the unit by which the intensity of other lights is reckoned in Great Britain; and also that the light so emitted by domestic candles is practically unaffected by the sizes—"sixes," "eights," or "twelves"—burnt. In the sizes ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... the frustrated and desperate composure of the man who can only be of use while he is sitting still and keeping his head. The vision screen was now a blur of writhing mist, lighted by the sun and torn at by emptiness. There was luminosity where the ships had encountered each other. It was sunshine upon thin smoke. It was like the insanely enlarging head of a newborn comet, whose tail would be formed presently by light-pressure. The Plumie ship was almost invisible behind ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... was it—plated. Plated with some metallic substance that was itself a reservoir of luminosity and from which, it came to me, pulsed the force that lighted the winking ions. But who could have done such a thing? For what ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... lambent, blue eyes. All these things rushed over the thrilled little secretary with an effect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no single, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps, most vividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes, their luminosity, their far-seeing expression, their kindliness. They were the eyes of the true visionary, but in such a personality they proclaimed the mystic who had retained his health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely a visionary, but just as surely a wholesome man of ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... account by recording the falling, just before dawn of the 11th, of an extraordinarily brilliant meteor that flamed with a curious red and green light as it entered the earth's atmosphere. This meteor did not burn itself out, but fell, still retaining its luminosity, from a point near the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... had partly spoiled the reflector. Still, my range of vision now extended to the belly-band in the horses' harness. The light that used to show me the road for about fifty feet in front of the horses' heads gave a short truncated cone of great luminosity, which was interesting and looked reassuring; but it failed to reach the ground, for it was so adjusted that the focus of the converging light rays lay ahead and not below. Before, therefore, the point of ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... universe; and for human life to return thither at death and to enjoy immortality, it was only necessary to refine away all corporeal grossness by following the doctrines of Lao Tz[)u]. By and by, this One came to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling luminosity in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest glory of motion, the souls of those who had left the slough of humanity behind them. These transcendental notions were entirely corrupted at a very early ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... sepulchre cut off from light, and even the dignity of the Cross must be withdrawn and the knowledge that Jesus lived. That inner world, to which by long effort he had learned the way, was all alight with agony; it was bitter as brine, it was of that pale luminosity that is the utmost product of pain, it hummed in his ears with a note that rose to a scream ... it pressed upon him, penetrated him, stretched him as on a rack.... And with that his will grew ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... the battle, the Solarians began to wonder why the Nigran fleet was decreasing so rapidly—certainly they had not caused all that damage! Then suddenly they found the answer. One of their ships—then another—and another fell victim to a pale red ray that showed up like a ghostly pillar of luminosity coming from nowhere and going nowhere! The answer? The invaders' ships were becoming invisible! The invisibility detectors were being overloaded now, and the hunt was hard, while the Nigrans were slipping past them and silently destroying Solarian ships! The molecular motion rays were quite ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... spirited and brave people through such a trying crisis as the American Revolution. His star was not dark and bright by turns—did not reveal itself in uncertain and fitful glimmerings—but shone with a full and steady luminosity across the troubled night of a nation's beginning. Under these broad and beneficent rays the Ship of State was guided, through a sea of chaos, to safe anchorage. The voyage across those seven eventful years was one that tried men's souls. Often, appalling dangers threatened. Wreck on the rocks ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... The cloudy luminosity of the Milky Way had been resolved into a multitude of separate stars, disclosing the immensity of the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... our hut, the elements without seemed desirous of celebrating the occasion with equal emphasis and greater decorum. The eastern sky was massed with swaying auroral light, the most vivid and beautiful display that I had ever seen—fold on fold the arches and curtains of vibrating luminosity rose and spread across the sky, to slowly fade and yet ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... extremely important to discover whether difference in the quality, as well as in the intensity, of a visual stimulus influences the organism; in other words, whether color sensitiveness, as well as brightness sensitiveness, is present. If the dancer perceives only brightness or luminosity, and not color, it is evident that its visual world is strikingly different from that of the normal human being. The experiments now to be described were planned to show what ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... dwelt on the luminosity of the atmosphere in southern and south-western France. To-night not a breath was stirring, the outer radiance was the radiance of stars only, yet so limpid, so lustrous the air that cloudless moonlight could hardly have made every object seem clearer, more distinct. The feeling inspired ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... archaeologists. 314 and 316, Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsis, and Ulysses restoring Chryseis to her father, are typical imaginary classic compositions and variations on the artist's favourite theme—the effects of sunlight on an atmosphere of varying luminosity and on the limpid, rippling waves of the sea. We now come to the grand monarque of the arts at Paris during the century, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), founder of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... difference of luminosity between the sun and the planets, which, as they are all made of the very same materials, and by the same process, according to this theory, ought to be equally self-luminous, is in itself a self-evident refutation of the nebular hypothesis, or of any other process of creation by mere mechanical ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... the Milky Way so white, that a luminosity bathed the earth about him which, in contrast to the smoky lowland, seemed almost bright. Before him lay what had once been the little hamlet on the scarp—he recognized it, remembering how the French barrage had ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... interior consciousness becomes at-one-with-self, God, and from that inconceivable height of profound vision we again look upon Nature. Behold Sun, Moon and planets in all the original magnificence of their nebulous luminosity; from nebulous rings we proceed, stage after stage, each producing its own degrees of life. On, on we pass the ages, the geological cycles of inconceivable duration in time, but only a mere instant in eternity; and on and on, as the changes roll, until ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... comet, as seen through Newell's large refracting telescope at Ferndene, Gateshead, and which he described as having a head like "a fan-shaped projection of light, with ear-like appendages, at each side, which sympathetically complemented each other at every change either of form or luminosity." ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... wonderful control over the muscles of the eyelids and brows, which render the eyes dangerously expressive. The habit of artificially blackening the under lid with Surmah, too, adds, to no mean extent, to the luminosity and vivid power of the eyes in contrast to the alabaster-like, really beautiful skin of the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Harkness told him. "That luminosity in action means something—some conversion of energy, electrical, perhaps, to carry them on lines of force of which we know nothing as yet. That's a guess—but they do it. You and I ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... which we have no exact equivalent, the dominant note of the Italian sky, when the sun is well up, being its intense luminosity. ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... better educated and more pretentious contemporaries. I give but one example out of many. Thackeray was a good Victorian radical, who seems to have gone to his grave quite contented with the early Victorian radical theory—the theory which Macaulay preached with unparalleled luminosity and completeness; the theory that true progress goes on so steadily through human history, that while reaction is indefensible, revolution is unnecessary. Thackeray seems to have been quite content to think that the world would grow more and more liberal in the limited ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... gale, scurrying great gray clouds over a fierce sky. It was not exactly dark, though in this part of the city there is neither gas nor electricity, and on such a night as this neither moon nor stars dared show their faces in so gray a sky; but a sort of all-diffused luminosity was in the air, as though the sea of atmosphere was charged ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... that succeeded in penetrating was dazzlingly brilliant, and the shadows, their own included, were inky black. As they approached the farther side and the sunlight decreased, they found that a diffused luminosity pervaded everything. It was sufficiently bright to enable them to see the dark side of the meteoric masses, and, on emerging from the nucleus in total darkness, they found the shadow stretching thousands of miles before them into space. "I now understand," said Bearwarden, "why stars of the sixth ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... going to work this perhaps somewhat fanciful analogy to death, or pretend it is anything more than a convenient metaphor. Still, taken as such, it is not without its luminosity. For a metaphor, by supplying us with a picturable representation, often enables us really to get at the hang of the thing a vast deal better than the most solemn argument. And I fancy communities sometimes pass through just such a chrysalis stage, when it seems to the timid ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... extraordinary as any of those described by Arthur Pym. For three or four hours, sparks, accompanied by a sharp noise, shot out of our fingers' ends, our hair, and our beards. There was an electric snowstorm, with great flakes falling loosely, and the contact produced this strange luminosity. The sea rose so suddenly and tumbled about so wildly that the Paracuta was several times in danger of being swallowed up by the waves, but we got through the mystic-seeming tempest all ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... costume-colors of Martinique-always relieved by brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special violet dresses worn on certain religious occasions—have an indescribable luminosity,—a wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,—her honey-lovers—her insects: these are wasp-colors. I ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... only to darkened values, and not to hues or chromas. Yet one writer says, "This yellow shades into green," which is certainly a change of hue, and then speaks of "a brighter shade" in spite of his evident intention to suggest a stronger chroma, which is neither a shade nor brighter luminosity. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

... had an extraordinary quality that I seemed to notice in all the faces around me—a quality of the flesh that seemed to lose all luminosity, of the eyes that seemed forever to have a tendency to seek the ground, to avoid the sight of the world. When he brightened to answer her it was as if with effort. It seemed as if a weight were on the mind of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... found that he was actually writing against the grain. He threw this aside impatiently, and with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm began a new story, Weir of Hermiston, which would undoubtedly have been his masterpiece, had he lived to complete it. In luminosity of style, in nobleness of conception, in the almost infallible choice of words, this astonishing fragment easily takes first place in Stevenson's productions. At the end of a day spent in almost feverish ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the celebrated nocturne in the shape of a T—one pier of the bridge and part of the arch, the mystery of the barge, and the figure guiding the barge in the current, the strange luminosity of the fleeting river! lines of lights, vague purple and illusive distance, and all is so obviously beautiful that one pauses to consider how there could have been stupidity enough to deny it. Of less dramatic significance, but of equal esthetic value, is the nocturne known ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore



Words linked to "Luminosity" :   luminousness, illuminance, bright, luminous, luminescence, brightness level, physical property, incandescence, glow, brightness, dull, illumination



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