The Collaborative International Dictionary
Coma \Co"ma\, n. [L., hair, fr. Gr. ko`mh.]
(Astron.) The envelope of a comet; a nebulous covering, which surrounds the nucleus or body of a comet.
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(Bot.) A tuft or bunch, -- as the assemblage of branches forming the head of a tree; or a cluster of bracts when empty and terminating the inflorescence of a plant; or a tuft of long hairs on certain seeds.
Coma Berenices[L.] (Astron.), a small constellation north of Virgo; -- called also Berenice's Hair.
Wikipedia
Coma Berenices is an ancient asterism that has since been defined as one of the 88 modern constellations. It is located in the fourth galactic quadrant, between Leo and Bootes, and is visible in both celestial hemispheres. Introduced to the Western astronomy in the 3rd century BC by Conon of Samos, its name means "Berenice's Hair" (in Greek, via Latin), referring to Queen Berenice II of Egypt, who sacrificed her long hair as a votive offering.
Three stars of Coma Berenices visible to the naked eye form a 45-degree isosceles triangle. The constellation's brightest star is Beta Comae Berenices, a 4.26- magnitude main sequence star, similar to Sun. Coma Berenices contains one of the richest known galaxy clusters, the Coma Cluster, and the North Galactic Pole. The brightest known supernova, SN 2005ap was detected in Coma Berenices. The constellation is the radiant of one meteor shower, Coma Berenicids which has one of the fastest meteor speeds, up to 65 km/s (40 mps).
Coma Berenices is an album by the Japanese noise musician Merzbow.
Coma Berenices or Com is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy situated in the Coma Berenices constellation and discovered in 2006 in data obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The galaxy is located at the distance of about 44 kpc from the Sun and moves away from the Sun with the velocity of about 98 km/s. It is classified as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) meaning that it has an elliptical (ratio of axes ~ 5:3) shape with the half-light radius of about 70 pc.
Com is one of the smallest and faintest satellites of the Milky Way—its integrated luminosity is about times that of the Sun (absolute visible magnitude of about −4.1), which is much lower than the luminosity of the majority of globular clusters. However, its mass is about 1.2 million solar masses, which means that galaxy's mass to light ratio is around 450. A high mass to light ratio implies that Com is dominated by the dark matter.
The stellar population of Com consists mainly of old stars formed more than 12 billion years ago. The metallicity of these old stars is also very low at , which means that they contain 350 times less heavy elements than the Sun. The stars of Com were probably among the first stars to form in the Universe and currently there is no star formation in Com. The measurements have so far failed to detect any neutral hydrogen in it—the upper limit is only 46 solar masses.
Coma Dwarf is located near the Sagittarius Stream, which is made of stars stripped from the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. This association may indicate that Com is a former satellite of star cluster from that galaxy.
The modern constellation Coma Berenices lies across one of the quadrants symbolized by the The Azure Dragon of the East (東方青龍, Dōng Fāng Qīng Lóng), and Three Enclosures (三垣, Sān Yuán), that divide the sky in traditional Chinese uranography.
The name of the western constellation in modern Chinese is 后髮座 (hòu fà zuò), meaning "behind of queen constellation".
Coma Berenices is a traditional asterism that has since been defined as one of the 88 modern constellations.
Coma Berenices may also refer to:
- Coma Berenices (Chinese astronomy)
- Coma Berenices (album), a 2007 studio album by the Japanese noise musician, Merzbow
- Coma Berenices (dwarf galaxy), a dwarf spheroidal galaxy situated in the Coma Berenices constellation
Usage examples of "coma berenices".
If we'd waited until the 'ponies were fixed, we wouldn't have been caught up in this mess, we might have been well on our way to searching the Coma Berenices quadrant by now.
Its position, relative to Earth, is some thirty thousand light-years from Sol, in the direction of a point near the northern fringe of Coma Berenices.
Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetary on the low hillock, and Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off in the mysterious east.
Denis used to quote Marsh as saying odd things about the veiled facts behind the legend of Medusa's snaky locks - and behind the later Ptolemaic myth of Berenice, who offered up her hair to save her husband-brother, and had it set in the sky as the constellation Coma Berenices.