Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) retrograde motion, in astronomy, real or apparent movement of a planet, dwarf planet, moon, asteroid, or comet from east to west relative to the fixed stars. The most common direction of motion in the...

(Encyclopedia) Tellus tĕlˈəs [key], in Roman religion, earth goddess; also called Terra Mater. As a goddess of fertility, she was worshiped at festivals held in January (in conjunction with Ceres) and in April. T...

(Encyclopedia) transit, in astronomy, passage of a body across a meridian or passage of a small body across the visible disk of a larger one. (The passage of a large body across a smaller one is called an eclipse or...

(Encyclopedia) Low, Frank James, 1933–2009, American astronomer and physicist, b. Mobile, Ala., grad. Yale (B.S. 1955), Rice Univ. (M.A. 1957, Ph.D 1959). Low, who worked at Texas Instruments and the National Radi...

(Encyclopedia) Parma pärˈmə [key], city (1990 pop. 87,876), Cuyahoga co., NE Ohio, a suburb S of Cleveland; settled 1816, inc. 1924. Named for the Italian city of Parma, it is residential with a large industrial ...

(Encyclopedia) Möbius, Augustus Ferdinand mōˈbēəs, Ger. möˈbēəs [key],(1790–1868), German mathematician and astronomer, b. Schulpforta, Saxony. A professor of astronomy at the Univ. of Leipzig, he made im...

(Encyclopedia) astrometry: see astronomy.

(Encyclopedia) California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena, Calif.; originally for men, became coeducational in 1970; founded 1891 as Throop Polytechnic Institute; called Throop College of Technology, 1913–20....

(Encyclopedia) Ganesa gənāˈsə [key], b. 1507, d. after 1564, Indian astronomer. As a boy of 13 in a village N of Mumbai, Ganesa wrote a treatise on astronomy, the Grahalaghava, which has often been reprinted and...

(Encyclopedia) Burnham, Sherburne Wesley, 1838–1921, American astronomer, b. Thetford, Vt. After serving as observer at Dearborn Observatory, Chicago (1877–81, 1882–84), and as astronomer at Lick Observatory (...