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Zodiacal   Listen
adjective
Zodiacal  adj.  (Astron.) Of or pertaining to the zodiac; situated within the zodiac; as, the zodiacal planets.
Zodiacal light, a luminous tract of the sky, of an elongated, triangular figure, lying near the ecliptic, its base being on the horizon, and its apex at varying altitudes. It is to be seen only in the evening, after twilight, and in the morning before dawn. It is supposed to be due to sunlight reflected from multitudes of meteoroids revolving about the sun nearly in the plane of the ecliptic.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zodiacal" Quotes from Famous Books



... finished before the faster can plainly distinguish the white thread from the black thread (Koran ii. 183); some understand this literally, others apply it to the dark and silvery streak of zodiacal light which appears over the Eastern horizon an hour or so before sunrise. The fast then begins and ends with the disappearance of the sun. I have noticed its pains and penalties in my ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Book of Ku, ch. 24, mention is made of the Diviner of Dreams and his duties:—He had to consider the season of the year when a dream occurred, the day of the cycle, and the then predominant influence of the two powers of nature. By the positions of the sun, moon, and planets in the zodiacal spaces he could determine whether any one of the six classes of dreams was lucky or unlucky. Those six classes were ordinary and regular dreams, terrible dreams, dreams of thought, dreams in waking, dreams of joy, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... has always been luni-solar. From the earliest times they had observed the twelve ecliptical "mansions" and zodiacal signs, and also that the time occupied by the sun in travelling through a mansion was rather longer than one lunation, or the time intervening between two new moons. Their object has accordingly always been to bring the lunar and solar ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... animals, upon a low pallet, covered with stained scarlet cloth, sat Barbara. Around her head was coiffed, in folds like those of an Asiatic turban, a rich, though faded shawl, and her waist was encircled with the magic zodiacal zone—proper to the sorceress—the Mago Cineo of the Cingara—whence the name Zingaro, according to Moncada—which Barbara had brought from Spain. From her ears depended long golden drops, of curious antique fashioning; and upon ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... instruments, although the latter may occur when there is no visible aurora. An artificial aurora was produced by electrical means by Professor Lindstroem, in 67 deg. north latitude, which was found to exhibit the spectrum of the true aurora. You will find all information respecting the "Zodiacal light" ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... as I walked about a town in the evening, I used to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal light, which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight at a time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... sanctity of the contract. It was a kind of representation in miniature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldaeans. The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are the prominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbols employed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit around these—such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt of Ramman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples they guard, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the local god of Babylon. He rose with the fortunes of this city, finally becoming supreme: he was regarded as creator, and invested with all the highest functions; in the later astronomical constructions he is represented as the arranger of the zodiacal system and all that was connected with it, but, as is pointed out above, this is no ground for regarding him as having been originally a sun-god. A glimpse into the method of theological reconstruction is afforded by the representation in the cosmogonic epic where he is invested ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... between a fixed and intellectual zodiac; and the movable and visible zodiac. According to the former, Aries still stands as the first of the signs; that is to say, the first thirty degrees of the zodiacal circle, reckoning from the equinoctial point in spring, are allotted to Aries in the intellectual zodiac.... Astronomers generally choose to reckon by the fixed and intellectual ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... as I was once, To fair Astronomy a dunce, Or launching jeux d'esprit at her, Of light zodiacal making light, Deaf to all tales of comets bright, And knowing but such stars as might Roll r-rs at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... and "lace,'' or "tress,'' nebul. * The strange surroundings of the sun, only seen in particular circumstances, but evidently playing a constant part in the daily phenomena of the solar system. * The mystery of the Zodiacal Light and the Gegenschein. * The extraordinary transformations undergone by comets and their tails. * The prodigies of meteorites and masses of stone and metal fallen from the sky. * The cataclysms that have wrecked the moon. * The problem of life and intelligence ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... gardens of Marly ascended almost imperceptibly to the Pavilion of the Sun., which was occupied only by the King and his family. The pavilions of the twelve zodiacal signs bounded the two sides of the lawn. They were connected by bowers impervious to the rays of the sun. The pavilions nearest to that of the sun were reserved for the Princes of the blood and the ministers; the rest were occupied by persons ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... instead of that, I shall rather choose to make this one practical Observation. That the mercy of GOD to mankind in sending His Son into the world, was a very signal mercy. It was a zodiacal mercy! I say it was truly zodiacal; for CHRIST keeps within the Tropics! He goes not out of the Pale of the Church; but yet he is not always at the same distance from a believer. Sometimes he withdraws himself into the apogaeum of doubt, sorrow, and despair; but then ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... of planets given to them signifies "wandering" stars. If you observe the Heavens on a fine starry night, and are sufficiently acquainted with the principal stars of the Zodiac as described in a preceding chapter, you may be surprised on certain evenings to see the figure of some zodiacal constellation slightly modified by the temporary presence of a brilliant orb perhaps surpassing in its luminosity the finest stars of the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... "Darajah"an instant; also a degree (of the Zodiac). We still find this division of time in China and Japan, where they divide the twenty-four hours into twelve periods, each of which is marked by a quasi-Zodiacal sign: e.g.— ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the Universe, about sixteen degrees broad, in which the planets travel. It is divided into twelve Signs or Houses of thirty degrees each, and our Sun enters a new sign on an average of every thirty days. At the end of twelve months it has completed the zodiacal circle of 360 degrees, or ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro

... still retains some lancets of the E.E. period; but the earliest windows in the chancel and N. transept are Dec. The body of the church is Perp., and the W. window deserves attention. Note, too, (1) stoup outside N. porch; (2) fragments in S. porch of the same zodiacal signs that appear at Stoke-sub-Hamdon; (3) piscinas (especially that in the chancel); (4) tomb of Sir Giles Daubeny (d. 1445) and one of his wives, with a fine brass (there is also a brass to his second wife on the floor, concealed ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... hand gained upon the short hand by one-sixtieth each year, and once in every sixty years the two hands were found at the point of conjunction. Years were indicated by naming the "celestial stem" and the zodiacal sign to which the imaginary hands happen to be pointing, just as clock-time is indicated by the minutes read from the long hand and the hours from the short. The sexagenary cycle came into use in China in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... (the Great Bear) is not only useful to find the north star, but its position, when the pointers will be vertical in the heavens, may be estimated with sufficient accuracy to determine the north even when the north star can not be seen. In tropical latitudes, the zodiacal stars, such as Orion and Antares, give the east and west bearing, and the Southern Cross the north and south when Polaris and the Great ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... the meteorological conditions were in a very disturbed state. But as I started homewards the stars were shining brightly, whilst far away in the western sky, beyond the rolling downs and bleak plains of the Cotswold Hills, shone forth the strange, mysterious, zodiacal light, towering upwards into a point among the stars, and shaped in the form of a cone. It was the first occasion this curious, unexplained phenomenon had ever come under my notice, and it was awe inspiring enough ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... still awaits complete elucidation. For once even that mystery-solver the spectroscope has been baffled, for the line it sifts from the aurora is not matched by that of any recognized substance. A like line is found in the zodiacal light, it is true, but this is of little aid, for the zodiacal light, though thought by some astronomers to be due to meteor swarms about the sun, is held to be, on the whole, as mysterious as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Marcus Porcius the De re rustica of literary style of, compared with Varro Cats, contrasted with dogs in relations with man Cattle, leaves as fodder for feeding of care of number and selection of, for a farm honour paid to, in naming Zodiacal signs and the constellations advice on breeding and feeding number of, to be kept advice on neat cattle Centuria, defined Chaff, derivation of word Cheese, varieties and qualities of Cheese cake Chestnuts as food in ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... also controlled by a zodiacal constellation. In the Creation myth of Babylon it is stated that when Merodach engaged in the work of setting the Universe in order he "set all the great gods in their several stations", and "also created their images, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... any of the planets, are said to "enter" these signs, they are not now the same as the constellations known as the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin. They did correspond some two thousand or more years ago, when the zodiacal belt was divided into twelve parts and named; but at present, on account of the nutation or gyratory motion of the poles of the earth, the signs of the zodiac (not the constellations) are drifting westward ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... Of great importance is the Creation Legend, a cuneiform compiled from older records during the reign of Assur-bani-pal, c. 650 B.C., in which there occurs a passage interpretable as pointing to the acceptance of 36 constellations: 12 northern, 12 zodiacal and 12 southern. These constellations were arranged in three concentric annuli, the northern ones in an inner annulus subdivided into 60 degrees, the zodiacal ones into a medial annulus of 120 degrees, and the southern ones into an outer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... 9 showed us right abeam a splendid display of the Zodiacal Light, whose pyramid suggested the glow of a hemisphere on fire. The triangle, slightly spherical, measured at its base 22 degrees to 24 degrees and rose to within 6" of Jupiter. The reflection in the water was perfect and lit up with startling distinctness the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... haze of light stretching up from it; he declared it to be quite as large as the moon, and not dim at the edges. I am so weak that any attempt to get a sight of it was out of the question; but I think it must have been Venus in the Zodiacal Light that he saw, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... (zodiacal light) preceding the true dawn; the Persians call the former Subh-i-kazib (false or lying dawn) opposed to Subh-i-sadik (true dawn) and suppose that it is caused by the sun shining through a hole in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Zodiacal" :   zodiac



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