Word: distant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With all the nervous preparation that precedes the youngest daughter's a debut, Harvard is decorating the house--stringing advantageous lanterns and fabricating white fountains in exciting places. The Yard is rapidly losing its staid respectability and assuming the artificial glamor which distant relatives and more distant story-writers expect of it. And the Seniors, most of whom have too much to do at present any way, are losing many valuable hours on tours of inspection, on discussing the whys and hows of the water system. The bandstand is as yet in too embryonic a state to attract attention...
...reaching the earth. This happened in 1840. Since that time hundreds of stars have had their distance measured similarly, but less than a dozen are known to be nearer than 61 Oygni. The nearest is Alpha Centauri, a star in the southern skies, a little over four "light years" distant. The number of stars whose direct parallax can be measured is very limited...
...short distance to the west of Jupiter is Saturn. These two planets may be distinguished from the bright star Spica, which lies below Jupiter and Saturn and a little to the eastward, by the steadiness of the light emitted,--a characteristic feature of planets as compared with the more distant stars. Jupiter and Saturn are the two largest planets of the solar system, and are well situated for observation with telescopes of moderate size...
...Major chased by the huntsman Bootes. The brightest star of Bootes is Arcturus, found by following the bend of the handle of the "dipper" to the eastward. Arcturus is one of the few stars whose diameter has actually been measured, although, like all "fixed stars", it is so far distant that with no telescope of any size however great can we even hope to see size or shape directly. A little more than a year ago, the diameter of Arcturus was measured at Mount Wilson by the interferometer method familiar to the physicist, and found...
This motion of the sun is not peculiar, for, contrary to the earlier conceptions, all "fixed" stars appear in motion. The static universe of the ancients has become dynamic, and the astronomer may wait centuries for correct conclusions in regard to those motions of the more distant stars. Three things, however, seem well established as a result of study of both proper motions and radial velocities. These are: (1) the motion of the sun in space above mentioned; (2) the common motion of certain groups or clusters of stars, the two most notable examples of which are the Taurus...