Columbia Encyclopedia

(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...

(Encyclopedia) Zhou Enlai or Chou En-lai both: jō ĕn-lī [key], 1898–1976, Chinese Communist leader. A member of a noted Mandarin family, he was educated at an American-supported school in China and a university...

(Encyclopedia) Guangdong or Kwangtung both: gwängˈdo͝ongˈ [key], province, c.76,000 sq mi (196,891 s...

(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 ...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Schematic representation of Kepler's second law: The areas ABF and A′B′F′ are equal and are swept out in equal intervals of time by a planet orbiting around the sun (at F). Kepler's laws...

(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...

(Encyclopedia) spectroheliograph, device for photographing the surface of the sun in a single wavelength of light, usually one corresponding to a chief element contained in the sun, e.g., hydrogen or calcium; the re...

(Encyclopedia) halo, in meteorology, short-lived circles or arcs, and less commonly spikes and crosses, of colored or whitish light surrounding the moon or sun or in clouds as seen from above. A halo occurs when the...

(Encyclopedia) Lockyer, Sir Joseph Norman lŏkˈyər [key], 1836–1920, English astronomer, educated on the Continent. One of the first to make a spectroscopic examination of the sun and stars, he devised (1868), i...

(Encyclopedia) twilight, period between sunset and total darkness or between total darkness and sunrise. Total darkness does not occur immediately when the sun sinks below the horizon because light from the sun that...