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To lisp. [Obs.] Chaucer.

etween it and the eye, or between the luminous body and that illuminated by it. A lunar eclipse is caused by the moon passing through the earth's shadow; a solar eclipse, by the moon coming between the sun and the observer. A satellite is eclipsed by entering the shadow of its primary. The obscuration of a planet or st…

r an oblique section of a cone through its opposite sides. The greatest diameter of the ellipse is the major axis, and the least diameter is the minor axis. See Conic section, under Conic, and cf. Focus.

stics are often added, such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated festivals of churches, terms of courts, etc. Nautical almanac, an almanac, or year book, containing astronomical calculations (lunar, stellar, etc.), and other information useful to mariners.…

Banded or marked with circles. Annular eclipse (Astron.), an eclipse of the sun in which the moon at the middle of the eclipse conceals the central part of the sun's disk, leaving a complete ring of light around the border.

A portion of a curved line; as, the arc of a circle or of an ellipse.

f the celestial bodies, of their magnitudes, motions, distances, periods of revolution, eclipses, constitution, physical condition, and of the causes of their various phenomena.

o, actual or figurative. The glorious aureole of light seen around the sun during total eclipses. Proctor. The aureole of young womanhood. O. W. Holmes.

e curve into two symmetrical portions, as in the parabola, which has one such axis, the ellipse, which has two, or the circle, which has an infinite number. The two axes of the ellipse are the major axis and the minor axis, and the two axes of the hyperbola are the transverse axis and the conjugate axis. -- Axis of a…

A row of bright spots observed in connection with total eclipses of the sun. Just before and after a total eclipse, the slender, unobscured crescent of the sun's disk appears momentarily like a row of bright spots resembling a string of beads. The phenomenon (first fully described by Francis Baily, 1774 -- 1844) is tho…

To obscure; to eclipse; to shadow. He sung how earth blots the moon's gilded wane. Cowley.

To sully; to stain; to blemish, as reputation. Sarcasms may eclipse thine own, But can not blur my lost renown. Hudibras.

s, or the result, of calculating; computation; reckoning, estimate. "The calculation of eclipses." Nichol. The mountain is not so his calculation makes it. Boyle.

ler discovered that the various observed positions of the planet Mars were points in an ellipse. "The colligation of facts." Whewell. Colligation is not always induction, but induction is always colligation. J. S. Mill.

So near the sun as to be obscured or eclipsed by his light, as the moon or planets when not more than eight degrees and a half from the sun. [Obs.] Planets that are oft combust. Milton.

ection of the surface of a right cone and a plane. The conic sections are the parabola, ellipse, and hyperbola. The right lines and the circle which result from certain positions of the plane are sometimes, though not generally included. -- Conic sections, that branch of geometry which treats of the parabola, ellipse,…

ine through the two foci. -- Conjugate diameters (Conic Sections), two diameters of an ellipse or hyperbola such that each bisects all chords drawn parallel to the other. -- Conjugate focus (Opt.) See under Focus. -- Conjugate mirrors (Optics), two mirrors so placed that rays from the focus of one are received at th…

ce, or aureola, which surrounds the sun, and which is seen only when the sun is totally eclipsed by the moon.

Of or pertaining to a corona (in any of the senses). The coronal light during the eclipse is faint. Abney.

led from Calippus, who proposed it as an improvement on the Metonic cycle. -- Cycle of eclipses, a priod of about 6,586 days, the time of revolution of the moon's node; -- called Saros by the Chaldeans. -- Cycle of indiction, a period of 15 years, employed in Roman and ecclesiastical chronology, not founded on any as…