perihelion
Americannoun
-
perihelia
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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Nouns
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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After several Earth flybys and a carefully planned encounter with Jupiter, the spacecraft will settle into a 1.5-year orbit with a perihelion of about 1 AU and an inclination of up to 75°.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2025
Dr Balaji said opportunities to spot the comet may occur "in the days around perihelion, depending on local conditions and the comet's behaviour".
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2025
Even as the Northern Hemisphere experiences winter’s chill, our planet on Tuesday, depending on your time zone, will be at perihelion, the closest it gets to the sun during its elliptical orbit.
From New York Times ● Jan. 1, 2024
The exact distances of Earth’s perihelion and aphelion change a bit from year to year because of the gravitational influence of the other planets, as well as that of the moon.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 30, 2023
At the perihelion of Adrienne's Dianalike sway over French hearts, a new social lion arrived in Paris.
From Superwomen by Albert Payson Terhune
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
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
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
Moreover, a large majority of comets would then have their aphelia in the direction of the sun’s motion, and therefore their perihelia in the opposite direction.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 7 "Columbus" to "Condottiere" by Various
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.
