WORD LISTSFrom Ascension to Zenith: Astronomy and Stargazing TermsSun Jun 28 12:39:50 EDT 2020
By Vocabulary.com (NY)
 The night sky is full of wonders, and this list will help you make sense of what you see. Learn this list and become a vocabulary star!
  
alignment
Ligne means "line" in French, and when things aline they line up. It's fairly common to hear people stay "the stars are in alignment" when they're talking about good luck.
“The moon and Venus are in perfect alignment,” he continued, pointing his camera at the sky, where the first whispers of dawn hadn’t yet dimmed the stars.
altitude
The pilot of Mahan Air Flight 1152 quickly took the aircraft to a lower altitude to avoid a collision, the report said.
ascension
Ascendere means "to climb" or "to go up" in Latin; its opposite descendere gives us descend.
Balloons were mostly tethered to the ground Saturday because of fog and that mass ascension was canceled.
astrology
Astrologia is Ancient Greek for "a telling of the stars," meaning fortune-telling based on the Zodiac and other mythical constructs.
Sixty percent said they hold at least one “new age” belief, like astrology, psychics or crystals.
astronomical
An astronomical unit, which measures the distance between the Earth and the sun, is approximately 93 million miles.
astronomy
Astronomia is Greek for "the law of the stars." Unlike astrology, above, astronomy is based in science, using a variety of technologies to understand the workings of the universe.
She uses a donated telescope for astronomy classes, but felt she needed another, so she decided to build one.
astrophysics
Perhaps more important, though, astrophysics, if not essential to our basic survival, is tied to the core of humanity itself—to understanding where, what and who we are.
eclipse
In Maiduguri, that same year, a total lunar eclipse sparked a riot, after local Muslim men took the eclipse as a sign that the city was overrun with immorality.
horizon
When it’s farther from the sun and visible above the horizon, it’s easier to spot during the day.
lodestar
A lodestar is one that you use to navigate.
Alcott idealized Marmee as “Little Women’s” moral center and lodestar — guiding her daughters’ development, nurturing their talents and encouraging their ambitions.
nadir
If you're looking up at the stars and you draw a line down through the ground below your feet, the point in the sky above where that line emerges on the other side of the planet is the nadir.
The zenith is directly overhead, the nadir directly underfoot.
observatory
Researchers who manage the observatory spotted the comet in March when it was headed in the direction of the sun.
sidereal
Sidereus is Latin for "of the stars." The word consider originally meant "consult the stars," as in looking for omens or seeing an astrologer before making a decision.
This figure is known as the "sidereal day" or "stellar day".
syzygy
In Greek, sizigios means "yoked together" like two oxen ploughing a field. When three or more stars or planets line up from our point of view, that's known as a syzygy.
When the perigee occurs at the same time as a full moon, we get a “perigee syzygy”—colloquially known as a supermoon.
zenith
Zenith is the opposite of nadir: the point in the sky directly above your head.
As the sun approached its zenith, and the park bustled with midday traffic, the heat transformed the hidey-hole into a wretched furnace.
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