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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
1 astronomy terms
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perihelion
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tags: [astronomy]
► definition
Definition:the point at which an orbiting body passes closest to the sun
image: By Chris55 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43688106
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For if, in its perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long,
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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On comparing the intervals between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its perihelion, after giving credit, in the most exact manner, for all the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it appears that the periods are gradually diminishing; that is to say, the major axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter, in a slow but perfectly regular decrease.
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