perihelion
Americannoun
-
perihelia
plural
noun
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Etymology
Origin of perihelion
1660–70; < Greek peri- peri- + hḗli ( os ) sun + -on neuter noun suffix, on the model of perigee; earlier in the New Latin form perihelium
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Example Sentences
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The images were taken about a month after the comet's closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 21, 2026
On Monday, the comet was at perihelion, the point at which it is closest to the Sun, which influences how bright it appears.
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2025
The last perihelion, if you’re wondering, was on January 4, 2023, and Earth’s center was 147,098,924 km from that of the sun, or about 1.5 percent closer than average.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 30, 2023
Even as the Northern Hemisphere experiences winter’s chill, our planet on Wednesday will be at perihelion, the closest it gets to the sun during its elliptical orbit.
From New York Times ● Jan. 1, 2023
In the six weeks in which Mercury moves from aphelion to perihelion, it approaches the Sun by fourteen millions of miles, and the heat received by it is increased 2½ times.
From Are the Planets Inhabited? by E. Walter (Edward Walter) Maunder
The extremes of temperature at perihelia and aphelia to which comets are subjected did not bother him particularly.
From Astronomy: The Science of the Heavenly Bodies by David Peck Todd
The art has also been applied to the observation of comets at distances from their perihelia so great as to prevent their visual observation.
From History of Astronomy by George Forbes
This comet, therefore, which, according to Goldschmidt, passes beyond the orbit of Jupiter, is one of the few whose perihelia are beyond Mars.
From COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 by Alexander von Humboldt
In recent years a few have been discovered which are at times considerably within the orbit of Mars, the nearest perihelia being less than 15 million miles beyond the earth's orbit.
From The New Gresham Encyclopedia. Vol. 1 Part 2 Amiel to Atrauli by Various
Those—and they are many—who vaguely think that science is something different from common-sense, and that any book is scientific which talks about perihelia and asymptotes and cetacea, will find their vague notions here well corroborated.
From The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
