Sunday, December 2, 2012

Heliacal

Meaning: rising and setting with the sun - when applied to stars, those that rise just before or set just after the sun, since if they rise or set at exactly the same time you wouldn't be able to see the star.

Usefulness: 1 (Stars move through this cycle, which has allowed people to do various clever and useful things by tracking them.)

Logofascination: 2 (Heliacal means relating to the sun, and as etymonline points out, a heliacal year can also be a canicular year, thanks to our friend Sirius, the dog star.)

In the wild: Not really, but related to Acronycal.

Degrees: 2

Connections: heliacal - stars

Which is used in: G&P, Book the Second (Pantagruel), I: Of the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel. Pantagruel was born a giant after a season of particularly powerful medlars, and some unusual celestial events:
... the sun's having tripped and stumbled a little towards the left hand, like a debtor afraid of sergeants, coming right upon him to arrest him: and the moon varied from her course above five fathom, and there was manifestly seen the motion of trepidation in the firmament of the fixed stars, called Aplanes, so that the middle Pleiade, leaving her fellows, declined towards the equinoctial, and the star named Spica left the constellation of the Virgin to withdraw herself towards the Balance, known by the name of Libra, which are cases very terrible, and matters so hard and difficult that astrologians cannot set their teeth in them; and indeed their teeth had been pretty long if they could have reached thither.

No comments:

Post a Comment