vertical circle

American  

noun

Astronomy.

1. a great circle on the celestial sphere passing through the zenith.

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vertical circle British  

noun

1. astronomy a great circle on the celestial sphere passing through the zenith and perpendicular to the horizon

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vertical circle Scientific  

1. A great circle on the celestial sphere that passes through the zenith and the nadir and thus is perpendicular to the horizon.

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Etymology

Origin of vertical circle

First recorded in 1550–60

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

vertical circle

The flagman swings his lamp, or his flag or hand, in a vertical circle at half-arm's length across the track.

From Time Magazine Archive

Azimuth, az′im-uth, n. the arc of the horizon between the meridian of a place and a vertical circle passing through any celestial body.—adj.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various

The distance of a star from the horizon, measured on a vertical circle, toward the zenith is called the star’s altitude.

From Astronomical Lore in Chaucer by Grimm, Florence M.

An apparent change in the position of an object, arising from a change of the observer's station, and which diminishes with the altitude of an object in the vertical circle.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir

But the great theodolite, with its vertical circle and telescope adapted to the observation of the heavenly bodies, as used by nautical astronomers, commonly called an alt-azimuth instrument, is almost an observatory per se.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir