Crossword clues for heliacal
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Heliacal \He*li"a*cal\, a. [Gr. ? belonging to the sun, fr. ?
the sun: cf. F. h['e]liaque.] (Astron.)
Emerging from the light of the sun, or passing into it;
rising or setting at the same, or nearly the same, time as
the sun.
--Sir T. Browne.
Note: The heliacal rising of a star is when, after being in conjunction with the sun, and invisible, it emerges from the light so as to be visible in the morning before sunrising. On the contrary, the heliacal setting of a star is when the sun approaches conjunction so near as to render the star invisible.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. Of or relating to the Sun, especially rising and setting with the sun.
WordNet
adj. pertaining to or near the sun; especially the first rising of a star after and last setting before its invisibility owing to its conjunction with the sun; "the heliacal rising of the Dog Star"; "the heliacal or Sothic year is determined by the heliacal rising of Sothis (the Egyptian name for the Dog Star)" [syn: heliac]
Usage examples of "heliacal".
It is only in this latter epoch that the perfect sky-ground correlation is attained, at the heliacal rising of Leo, when the Sphinx would have gazed directly at his own celestial counterpart in the pre-dawn.
This was when the astronomer-priests of Heliopolis observed what is technically known as the heliacal rising of Sirius in the east.
Having determined that the ancient Egyptians made use of the phenomenon of precession, Sellers then focused, to the exclusion of all else, on the idea that the ancients were tracking the heliacal rising of Orion at the spring equinox.
The heliacal rising of Canopus was also a precursor of the rising of the Nile.
The movements of the Seven Stars that revolve around the pole were also represented, as were those of Capella, which by its heliacal rising at the moment when the Sun reached the Pleiades, in Taurus, announced the commencement of the annual revolution of the Sun.
In Egypt, another reason was, that then the Nile began to overflow, at the heliacal rising of Sirius.
In that connection there are three kinds of them, cosmical, achronical, and heliacal, important to be distinguished by all who would understand this ancient learning.
This passage of the Sun into Taurus, whose attributes he assumes on his return from the lower hemisphere or the shades, is marked by the rising in the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and by the heliacal setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and which thenceforward is in conjunction with the Sun of Spring, in his triumph over the darkness or Typhon.
And precisely at the moment of the heliacal rising of Arcturus, also rose Spica Virginis.
Ras, Mirach, and Arcturus, being very nearly simultaneous in their heliacal rising.
I can see the first arc of azure, hanging a wrinkled skirt of heliacal light.
You see the first heliacal rising of Sirius, or Sothis, and you tell me that means the Nile has now started to rise.
Dogstar, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in ancient times occurred soon after mid-summer.
The difficulty, at first only slight, which this caused in public life, increased with time, and ended by disturbing the harmony between the order of the calendar and that of natural phenomena: at the end of a hundred and twenty years, the legal year had gained a whole month on the actual year, and the 1st of Thot anticipated the heliacal rising of Sothis by thirty days, instead of coinciding with it as it ought.
The agreement of the two years, which had been disturbed by the force of circumstances, was re-established of itself after rather more than fourteen and a half centuries: the opening of the civil year became identical with the beginning of the astronomical year, and this again coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and therefore with the official date of the inundation.