Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Libration   Listen
noun
Libration  n.  
1.
The act or state of librating.
2.
(Astron.) A real or apparent libratory motion, like that of a balance before coming to rest.
Libration of the moon, any one of those small periodical changes in the position of the moon's surface relatively to the earth, in consequence of which narrow portions at opposite limbs become visible or invisible alternately. It receives different names according to the manner in which it takes place; as: (a) Libration in longitude, that which, depending on the place of the moon in its elliptic orbit, causes small portions near the eastern and western borders alternately to appear and disappear each month. (b) Libration in latitude, that which depends on the varying position of the moon's axis in respect to the spectator, causing the alternate appearance and disappearance of either pole. (c) Diurnal or parallactic libration, that which brings into view on the upper limb, at rising and setting, some parts not in the average visible hemisphere.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Libration" Quotes from Famous Books



... intelligent, and attached daughter. He consoled his solitude, and lightened the hours of sickness, by continuing the observations which he was now forbidden to publish to the world; and the last of his long train of discoveries was the phenomenon known by the name of the moon's libration. In the course of 1636-37 he lost successively the sight of both his eyes. He mentions this calamity in a tone of pious submission, mingled with a not unpleasing pride. "Alas, your dear friend and servant Galileo has become totally and irreparably blind; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... Relations in space, both absolute and relative, of the secondary planets. Largest and smallest of the moons. Greatest approximation to a primary planet. Retrogressive movement of the moons of Uranus. Libration of the Earth's satellite — p. 98 and note. Comets; the nucleus and tail; various forms and directions of the emanations in conoidal envelopes, with more or less dense walls. Several tails inclined toward the sun; change of form of fixed stars by the nuclei of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... degrees north and south, whose uniform and invariable action causes a long and constant swell, that exists even in the calmest weather, about the line, towards which its direction tends from either side. This swell or libration of the sea is so prodigiously long, and the sensible effect of its height, of course, so much diminished, that it is not often attended to; the gradual slope engrossing almost the whole horizon when the eye is not very much elevated ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... modern Sikhs of Hindostan, who have blended the Brahminical and Mahometan creeds by an incoherent syncretismus; or, as amongst many heretics of Persia and Arabia, who are mere crazy freethinkers, without any religious determination, without any principle of libration for the oscillating mind. Whereas our differences, leaving generally all central truths untouched, arise like our political parties, and operate like them; they grow out of our sincerity, and they ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... people. 2. Occasional accumulation of sensorial power in muscles subject to constant stimulus. In animals sleeping in winter. In eggs, seeds, schirrous tumours, tendons, bones. 3. Great exertion introduces pleasure or pain. Inflammation. Libration of the system between torpor and activity. Fever-fits. 4. Desire and aversion introduced. Excess of volition cures fevers. III. Of repeated stimulus. 1. A stimulus repeated too frequently looses effect. As opium, wine, grief. Hence old age. Opium and aloes in small doses. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... life that could be discerned by our senses—and would prevent landing; while nearly all the soundest astronomers agree in believing, on apparently sufficient grounds, that even the opposite hemisphere [of which small portions are from time to time rendered visible by the libration, though greatly foreshortened and consequently somewhat imperfectly seen] is equally devoid of the two primary necessaries of animal and vegetable life. That Mars has seas, clouds, and an atmosphere ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg



Words linked to "Libration" :   variation, astronomy



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org