"Parallax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to any certainty in this point, we must go other wayes to work; and as I have here examined the height and refractive property of the Air by other wayes then are usual, so must we find the Parallax of the Planets by wayes not yet practiced; and to this end, I cannot imagine any better way, then the Observations of them by two persons at very far distant parts of the Earth, that lye as neer as may be under the same Meridian, or Degree ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... sigh subjective, I greatly fear me, many a malediction objective, you are "learning the language of another world." To us, huddled together in our little ant-hill, one is "une bete," and one is "mon ange"; but from that fixed star we are all so far to have no parallax. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... stars. This astronomical term will soon become familiar in the course of the present lesson, where it will frequently recur, and always in connection with the measurement of celestial distances. "Do not let us fear," wrote Lalande in his Astronomie des Dames, "do not let us fear to use the term parallax, despite its scientific aspect; it is convenient, and this term explains a very simple and ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... several other discontented planets, have accepted an invitation from Sirius to join his system, on the most liberal appointments. We believe the report to have originated in nothing more than the discovery of the annual parallax of Sirius from the orbit of Saturn; but we may safely assure our readers that no steps have as yet been ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... fact that I can get a parallax to any of the fixed stars in a moment, with only the breadth of my nose for the base,' answered Heinrich, responding at once to the fun, and careless of the personal defect insinuated. 'She was near enough for even me to ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... had been ignorant of the mode in which the distance which separates the moon from the earth is calculated. They took advantage of this fact to explain to them that this distance was obtained by measuring the parallax of the moon. The term parallax proving "caviare to the general," they further explained that it meant the angle formed by the inclination of two straight lines drawn from either extremity of the earth's radius to the moon. On doubts being expressed ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... saves himself by flight. There is, to be sure, an arcanum of prosodic theory which is the province of specialists. It has its place in the scheme of things; but it is no more necessary for the genuine enjoyment of Milton (or the 'moderns') than a knowledge of the formulae for calculating the parallax of Alpha Leonis is necessary for enjoying the pillared firmament. We must then compromise with a system which reveals the existence of all the phenomena and tries to suggest their ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... space &c 180; remoteness, farness^, far- cry to; longinquity^, elongation; offing, background; remote region; removedness^; parallax; reach, span, stride. outpost, outskirt; horizon; aphelion; foreign parts, ultima Thule [Lat.], ne plus ultra [Lat.], antipodes; long range, giant's stride. dispersion &c 73. [units of distance] length &c 200. cosmic distance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... years he assisted his father in teaching the parish-school at Jedburgh, and in the evenings he went to Inchbonny to study astronomy with James Veitch, who always called him Davie. They were as much puzzled about the meaning of the word parallax as I had been with regard to the word algebra, and only learnt what it meant when Brewster went to study for the kirk in Edinburgh. They were both very devout; nevertheless, Brewster soon gave up the kirk for science, and he devoted himself especially ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... was a very brilliant object, equal to Venus at its brightest for the rest of November, not falling below the first magnitude for another four months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards. Tycho wrote a little book on the new star, maintaining that it had practically no parallax, and therefore could not be, as some supposed, a comet. Deeming authorship beneath the dignity of a noble he was very reluctant to publish, but he was convinced of the importance of increasing the number and accuracy of ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... measuring does not, however, take us very far away in the heavens. There are only a few hundred stars within five hundred trillion miles of the earth, and at that distance the "shift" of a star against the background (parallax, the astronomer calls it) is so minute that figures are very uncertain. At this point the astronomer takes up a new method. He learns the different types of stars, and then he is able to deduce more or less accurately the distance of a star of a known type from ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... of the observer, and is then called parallactic motion, or it may be caused by a real motion of the star. From the parallactic motion of the star it is possible to deduce its distance from the sun, or its parallax. The periodic parallactic proper motion is caused by the motion of the earth around the sun, and gives the annual parallax ([pi]). In order to obtain available annual parallaxes of a star it is usually necessary for the star ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... Bevis to Mr. Witchell, the latter gentleman compared it with an observation at Oxford, by the Rev. Mr. Hornsby, on the same eclipse, and thence computed the difference of longitude respecting the places of observation, making due allowance for the effect of parallax, and the prolate spheroidal figure of the earth. It appears from the Transactions that our navigator had already obtained the character ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... is involved. For such, a different geometry may and will be applicable; but for the tridimensional conditions of our activity the proposition is necessary and absolute. No measurement of any stellar parallax, however minute and whatever the result might be, could have any bearing on its truth. Geometry is the science of the pure forms of our motor activity amidst ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... well?—increase the difference between aphelion and perihelion, and give those that still like a changing climate a chance, while incidentally we should see more of the world—I mean the solar system—and, by enlarging the parallax, be able to measure the distance of a greater number of fixed stars. Put your helm hard down and shout 'Hard-a-lee!' You see, there is nothing simpler. You keep her off now, and six months hence you let ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... determined the place of the sun's apogee as well as its mean motion. Their calculations on the eccentricity of the moon prove that they had a rectilinear trigonometry and tables of chords. They had an approximate knowledge of parallax; they could calculate eclipses of the moon, and use them for the correction of their lunar tables. They understood spherical trigonometry, and determined the motions of the sun and moon, involving an accurate definition of the year and a method of predicting eclipses; they ascertained ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... altitude is still tolerably rapid, and, therefore, not later than 10 o'clock—take an altitude of the sun, an assistant, at the same moment, marking the time shown by the watch. The altitude so observed being properly corrected for refraction, parallax, &c., will, together with the latitude of the place, and the sun's declination, taken from the Nautical Almanac, enable us to calculate the time. This will be the solar or apparent time, that is, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... astronomers differed in an argument on the parallax of a lyrae—the one maintaining that it was three seconds, and the other that it was only two seconds. On being told of this discussion, and that the astronomers parted without arriving at an agreement, Plunket quietly remarked: "It must be a very serious quarrel ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... recorded by reading off at short intervals of time the position of the glass filament on the graduated arc. In order [page 332] to avoid errors of parallax, all readings were made by looking through a small ring painted on the vertical glass, in a line with the joint of the leaflet and the centre of the graduated arc. In the following diagrams the ordinates represent the angles which the leaflet made with ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... energy, seldom averse to enlightenment, and all professing to seek nothing else. When men of these qualities, aiming at the same or a like object, meet to compare their respective admeasurements of its parallax made from as many different points, they cannot fail to approach accuracy. Faith is a first element in all great undertakings. It removes mountains at Mont Cenis, as it walked the waves with Columbus. In our century even faith is progressive, and does not shrink from elbowing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various |
