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Parallax   Listen
noun
Parallax  n.  
1.
The apparent displacement, or difference of position, of an object, as seen from two different stations, or points of view.
2.
(Astron.) The apparent difference in position of a body (as the sun, or a star) as seen from some point on the earth's surface, and as seen from some other conventional point, as the earth's center or the sun.
3.
(Astron.) The annual parallax. See annual parallax, below.
Annual parallax, the greatest value of the heliocentric parallax, or the greatest annual apparent change of place of a body as seen from the earth and sun; it is equivalent to the parallax of an astronomical object which would be observed by taking observations of the object at two different points one astronomical unit (the distance of the Earth from the sun) apart, if the line joining the two observing points is perpendicular to the direction to the observed object; as, the annual parallax of a fixed star. The distance of an astronomical object from the Earth is inversely proportional to the annual parallax. A star which has an annual parallax of one second of an arc is considered to be one parsec (3.26 light years) distant from the earth; a star with an annual parallax of one-hundredth second of an arc is 326 light years distant. See parsec in the vocabulary, and stellar parallax, below.
Binocular parallax, the apparent difference in position of an object as seen separately by one eye, and then by the other, the head remaining unmoved.
Diurnal parallax or Geocentric parallax, the parallax of a body with reference to the earth's center. This is the kind of parallax that is generally understood when the term is used without qualification.
Heliocentric parallax, the parallax of a body with reference to the sun, or the angle subtended at the body by lines drawn from it to the earth and sun; as, the heliocentric parallax of a planet.
Horizontal parallax, the geocentric parallx of a heavenly body when in the horizon, or the angle subtended at the body by the earth's radius.
Optical parallax, the apparent displacement in position undergone by an object when viewed by either eye singly.
Parallax of the cross wires (of an optical instrument), their apparent displacement when the eye changes its position, caused by their not being exactly in the focus of the object glass.
Stellar parallax, the annual parallax of a fixed star.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Parallax" Quotes from Famous Books



... of these organizations. They are led by men of mind and 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... the Atheneum at 9.30, and having decided that I would take the Newark and Cambridge places of the comet, and work them up, I did so, getting to the three equations before I went home to dinner at 12.30. I omitted the corrections of parallax and aberrations, not intending to get more than a rough approximation. I find to my sorrow that they do not agree with those from my own observations. I shall look over ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... the moon's distance and motion are accurately known, and may be taken from the Nautical Almanac, being all embodied in the moon's parallax or semi-diameter, and in the declination and right ascension; but for the most important element,—the moon's mass, we in vain look to astronomy. In fact, it may be averred that the importance attached to astronomical authority, ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... than James Veitch; in his early 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 to optics, in which he ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... Picard, in his Voyage d'Uranibourg, stated, as a result of ten years' observations, that Polaris, or the Pole Star, exhibited variations in its position amounting to 40" annually; some astronomers endeavoured to explain this by parallax, but these attempts were futile, for the motion was at variance with that which parallax would occasion. J. Flamsteed, from measurements made in 1689 and succeeding years with his mural quadrant, similarly concluded that the declination ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... observations for the parallax of Arcturus," Leigh explained. "The atmosphere is clearer in winter, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... is full of examples of calling in the aid of these magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived to put the diameter of the earth's orbit, say two hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... our space is thus curved in higher space, some have considered astronomy to furnish in what is called the "negative parallax" of certain distant stars. This cannot be passed by, though it is too deeply involved with the probable error of the observers themselves to be considered more than an interesting fact in this connection. Every one knows that the ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... Saturn, and 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

... luminous guide; and if with an ardent love for truth he has sought her in vain through the ways of this life, he will but turn with the more hope to that better world where all is simple, true and everlasting: for there is no parallax at the zenith;—it is only near our troubled horizon that objects deceive us into vague and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... 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 ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... ring, having perceived that instead of one there are two concentric rings separated by a dark space. He also discovered four of the planet's satellites—viz. Japetus, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys. He made a near approximation to the solar parallax by means of researches on the parallax of Mars, and investigated some irregularities of the Moon's motion. Cassini discovered the belts of Jupiter, and also the Zodiacal Light, and established the coincidence of the nodes of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... been suspected of a slight degree of variability. It is evidently a star of enormous actual magnitude, for its parallax escapes trustworthy measurement. It can only be ranked among the very first of the light-givers of the visible universe. Spectroscopically it belongs to a peculiar type which has very few representatives among the bright stars, and which has been thus described: "Spectra in which the ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... Patrolman Willis continued his observations. A star-picture along the ecliptic. An hour's run on interplanetary drive—no overdrive field in use. Another picture. The two prints had only to be compared with a blinker for planets to stick out like sore thumbs, as contrasted with stars that showed no parallax. Sirene I—the innermost planet—was plainly close to a transit. II was away on the far side of its orbit. III was also on the far side. IV was in quadrature. There was the usual gap where V should have been. VI—it didn't matter. They'd passed VIII a little while since, a ball ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... on this pilgrimage, of ingress and egress, of tangent and parallax, of external and internal contact, would avail nothing. Is it not all written in the chronicles of the Astronomical Society? More to the point will it be to mention that Viviette's letter to Cambridge had been returned long before he reached that place, while her missive to Marseilles was, of ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... Hills, with Palaces adorn'd, Porches and Theatres, Baths, Aqueducts, Statues and Trophees, and Triumphal Arcs, Gardens and Groves presented to his eyes, Above the highth of Mountains interpos'd. By what strange Parallax or Optic skill 40 Of vision multiplyed through air or glass Of Telescope, were curious to enquire: And now the Tempter thus his silence broke. The City which thou seest no other deem Then great and glorious ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... would come 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 of longitude, but ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... link of brotherhood, by which One common Maker bound me to the kind? True; I am no proficient, I confess, In arts like yours. I cannot call the swift And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds, And bid them hide themselves in the earth beneath; I cannot analyse the air, nor catch The parallax of yonder luminous point That seems half quenched in the immense abyss: Such powers I boast not—neither can I rest A silent witness of the headlong rage, Or heedless folly, by which thousands die, Bone of my bone, and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... innumerable multitude of ennobled, purified, and expanded beings, convoked from every satellite and planet, every sun and star, and overflowing with gratitude and love to that universal Father of lights, with whom is no parallax, nor descension, and who kindled every spark of life and beauty that in their individual and combined lustre He might reflect and ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... lens-shaped, flattened stratum, detached on every side, whose major axis is estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor one at a hundred and fifty times the distance of Sirius. It would appear, on the supposition that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than that accurately determined for the brightest star in the Centaur (0".9128), that light traverses one distance of Sirius in three years, while it also follows, from Bessel's earlier excellent ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Moreover, in the world of sense, the objects and the points of view are each indifferent to the rest; but in life the points of views are centres of action that have had something to do with the making of the things looked at. If we could calculate the moral parallax arising from these causes, we should see, by the mere aid of the intellect, how unjust we often are in our complaints of ingratitude, inconstancy, and neglect. But without these nice calculations, such errors of view may be corrected at once by ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... carries no sanctity with me: I have read too many of them. If their forming a trade union will better the output of American literature I am keen for it. I know that the professional reader has a jaundiced eye; insensibly he acquires a parallax which distorts his vision. Reading incessantly, now fiction, now history, poetry, essays, philosophy, science, exegetics, and what not, he becomes a kind of pantechnicon of slovenly knowledge; a knower of thousands of things that aren't so. Every crank's whim, every cretin's philosophy, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... startlingly simple in his system as to lead the cautious astronomer to accept it, as there was in the later Keplerian system; and the absence of parallax in the stars seemed to condemn his system, which had no physical basis to recommend it, and no simplification at all over the Egypto-Tychonic system, to which Copernicus himself drew attention. It has been ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes



Words linked to "Parallax" :   solar parallax, diurnal parallax, heliocentric parallax, geocentric parallax, stellar parallax, horizontal parallax, annual parallax, optical phenomenon



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