Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Solar \So"lar\, a. [L. solaris, fr. sol the sun; akin to As. s[=o]l, Icel. s[=o]l, Goth. sauil, Lith. saule, W. haul,. sul, Skr. svar, perhaps to E. sun:F. solaire. Cf. Parasol. Sun.]
Of or pertaining to the sun; proceeding from the sun; as, the solar system; solar light; solar rays; solar influence. See Solar system, below.
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(Astrol.) Born under the predominant influence of the sun.
And proud beside, as solar people are.
--Dryden. Measured by the progress or revolution of the sun in the ecliptic; as, the solar year.
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Produced by the action of the sun, or peculiarly affected by its influence.
They denominate some herbs solar, and some lunar.
--Bacon.Solar cycle. See under Cycle.
Solar day. See Day, 2.
Solar engine, an engine in which the energy of solar heat is used to produce motion, as in evaporating water for a steam engine, or expanding air for an air engine.
Solar flowers (Bot.), flowers which open and shut daily at certain hours.
Solar lamp, an argand lamp.
Solar microscope, a microscope consisting essentially, first, of a mirror for reflecting a beam of sunlight through the tube, which sometimes is fixed in a window shutter; secondly, of a condenser, or large lens, for converging the beam upon the object; and, thirdly, of a small lens, or magnifier, for throwing an enlarged image of the object at its focus upon a screen in a dark room or in a darkened box.
Solar month. See under Month.
Solar oil, a paraffin oil used an illuminant and lubricant.
Solar phosphori (Physics), certain substances, as the diamond, siulphide of barium (Bolognese or Bologna phosphorus), calcium sulphide, etc., which become phosphorescent, and shine in the dark, after exposure to sunlight or other intense light.
Solar plexus (Anat.), a nervous plexus situated in the dorsal and anterior part of the abdomen, consisting of several sympathetic ganglia with connecting and radiating nerve fibers; -- so called in allusion to the radiating nerve fibers.
Solar spots. See Sun spots, under Sun.
Solar system (Astron.), the sun, with the group of celestial bodies which, held by its attraction, revolve round it. The system comprises the major planets, with their satellites; the minor planets, or asteroids, and the comets; also, the meteorids, the matter that furnishes the zodiacal light, and the rings of Saturn. The satellites that revolve about the major planets are twenty-two in number, of which the Earth has one (see Moon.), Mars two, Jupiter five, Saturn nine, Uranus four, and Neptune one. The asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter, thus far discovered (1900), number about five hundred, the first four of which were found near the beginning of the century, and are called Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta.
Note: The principal elements of the major planets, and of the comets seen at more than one perihelion passage, are exhibited in the following tables: [1913 Webster] I. -- Major Planets. Symbol.Name.Mean distance -- that of the Earth being unity.Period in days.Eccentricity.Inclination of orbit.Diameter in miles ????????????????????? [1913 Webster] II. -- Periodic Comets. Name.Greatest distance from sun.Least distance from sun.Inclination of orbit.Perihelion passage. [deg] [min] 54 Encke's3.314.100.34212 54188
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Solar telegraph, telegraph for signaling by flashes of reflected sunlight.
Solar time. See Apparent time, under Time.
Wiktionary
n. Any collection of heavenly bodies including a star or binary star, and any lighter stars, brown dwarfs, planets, and other objects in orbit. n. The Solar System; the Sun and all the objects in orbit around it.
WordNet
n. the sun with the celestial bodies that revolve around it in its gravitational field
Wikipedia
The Solar System comprises the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.
Solar System may also refer to:
- Solar System (song), a song written by Brian Wilson for the American rock band The Beach Boys.
The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.
The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets are giant planets, being substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are gas giants, being composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are ice giants, being composed mostly of substances with relatively high melting points compared with hydrogen and helium, called ices, such as water, ammonia and methane. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic.
The Solar System also contains smaller objects. The asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptune's orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, and beyond them a newly discovered population of sednoids. Within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets. Identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to these two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust, freely travel between regions. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, and many of the smaller bodies are orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after the Moon. Each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects.
The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, creates a bubble-like region in the interstellar medium known as the heliosphere. The heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of interstellar wind; it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, may also exist at a distance roughly a thousand times further than the heliosphere. The Solar System is located in the Orion Arm, 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way.
Usage examples of "solar system".
The moons of the outer solar system are almost certainly not replicas of our own rather dull satellite.
Now I could understand why the surviving crewmembers of the first linear test flight had spoken of this solar system in such tones of awe and even fear.
Plague ship-Tau must find the answer before they came into normal space about their own solar system or they were in for such trouble as made a broken contract seem the simplest of mishaps.
They belonged in deep space, out ranging the starlanes, not perpetually hopping back and forth between two planets in the same solar system.
The solar system guards had the unenviable task of rounding up such drifting threats of death and sending them into cleansing suns or giving them some other final end.
In another few minutes it was several million miles distant from Grautier where it went into hypertransition and with hardly any loss of time it arrived in the solar system of the Earth.
The solar system is full of people isolated on little research boats who could be plucked off them and incorporated into efficient machines like the Astrid.
Izzat's black hole had been big enough to gulp down Mars in one swallow and then flee from the Solar system at almost the speed of light, like the thief it was.
Before the evolution of our sun made our world uninhabitable, eight billion of us lived on the first planet of our solar system.
He was ready to accept anything if it would serve the purpose of ridding the solar system of Bull Coxine.
But we could still land a jet boat on Junior, set up more nuclear explosions to blast him out of the sun's grip, and send him on his way to our solar system.
The Chinese are still jammed into their country like sardines, and they don't give a damn about the intrinsic worth of China itself, much less a barren moonlet on the edge of the solar system.