Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Moon, Sun Myung

(Encyclopedia)Moon, Sun Myung sŭn yŭng mo͞on [key], 1920–2012, South Korean religious leader. He was an engineering student in Japan and a dockworker before founding (1954) the Unification Church with a doctri...

Sun Yat-sen

(Encyclopedia)Sun Yat-sen so͞on yät-sĕn [key], Mandarin Sun Wen, 1866–1925, Chinese revolutionary. He was born near Guangzhou into a farm-owning family. He attended (1879–82) an Anglican boys school in Honol...

Young, Charles Augustus

(Encyclopedia)Young, Charles Augustus, 1834–1908, American astronomer, b. Hanover, N.H., grad. Dartmouth, 1853. He discovered the reversing layer of the solar atmosphere and proved the gaseous nature of the sun's...

Sun, river, United States

(Encyclopedia)Sun, river, c.130 mi (210 km) long, rising in the Rocky Mts., NW Mont., and flowing generally E to the Missouri River at Great Falls. The Sun River project of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation utilizes t...

conjunction, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)conjunction, in astronomy, alignment of two celestial bodies as seen from the earth. Conjunction of the moon and the planets is often determined by reference to the sun. When a body is in conjunction ...

opposition

(Encyclopedia)opposition, in astronomy, alignment of two celestial bodies on opposite sides of the sky as viewed from earth. Opposition of the moon or planets is often determined in reference to the sun. Only the s...

Orbiting Solar Observatory

(Encyclopedia)Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO), series of eight orbiting observatories (see observatory, orbiting) launched between 1962 and 1971 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study...

quadrature

(Encyclopedia)quadrature, in astronomy, arrangement of two celestial bodies at right angles to each other as viewed from a reference point. If the reference point is the earth and the sun is one of the bodies, a pl...

luminosity

(Encyclopedia)luminosity, in astronomy, the rate at which energy of all types is radiated by an object in all directions. A star's luminosity depends on its size and its temperature, varying as the square of the ra...

elongation

(Encyclopedia)elongation, in astronomy, the angular distance between two points in the sky as measured from a third point. The elongation of a planet is usually measured as the angular distance from the sun to the ...