PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Precession of the equinoxes

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Precession n. The act of going before, or forward.

Lunisolar precession. (Astron.) See under Lunisolar.

Planetary precession, that part of the precession of the equinoxes which depends on the action of the planets alone.

Precession of the equinoxes (Astron.), the slow backward motion of the equinoctial points along the ecliptic, at the rate of 50.2" annually, caused by the action of the sun, moon, and planets, upon the protuberant matter about the earth's equator, in connection with its diurnal rotation; so called because either equinox, owing to its westerly motion, comes to the meridian sooner each day than the point it would have occupied without the motion of precession, and thus precedes that point continually with reference to the time of transit and motion.

See images of 'Precession of the equinoxes'

Etymology of 'Precession of the equinoxes'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Precession of the equinoxes" Quotes from Famous Books

... of his coming, the Egyptian astronomer priests, perched on the hill-tops near their temples, were wont to scan the eastern horizon with reference to some star which had been observed to precede the solar luminary. Of course the precession of the equinoxes, due to that axial wobble in which our clumsy earth indulges, would change the apparent position of the fixed stars in reference to the sun, so that the same star could not do service as heliacal messenger indefinitely; but, on the other hand, these changes are so slow that observations by many ...

— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... girls generally talk about, when a knot of them get together? Not, I believe, about the sources of the Nile, or the precession of the equinoxes, or the nature of the human understanding, or Dante, or Shakespeare, or Milton, although they have learned all about them in school; but upon a theme much nearer and dearer,—the one all-pervading feminine ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... the Dakota man, however, to rise to the greatness of the subject: "I give you the United States, bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the west ...

— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... thinking it possible that the human race is a witness of an exceptionally unchanging and stable condition of things, if the calculations of Mr. Croll are valid as to how far variations in the eccentricity in the earth's orbit together with the precession of the equinoxes have produced changes in climate. Mr. Wallace has pointed out[229] that the last 60,000 years having been exceptionally unchanging as regards these conditions, specific evolution may have been {227} ...

— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart