PERIHELION (perihelia)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: perihelia   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does perihelion mean? 

• PERIHELION (noun)
  The noun PERIHELION has 1 sense:

1. periapsis in solar orbit; the point in the orbit of a planet or comet where it is nearest to the sun

  Familiarity information: PERIHELION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERIHELION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Periapsis in solar orbit; the point in the orbit of a planet or comet where it is nearest to the sun

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("perihelion" is a kind of...):

periapsis; point of periapsis ((astronomy) the point in an orbit closest to the body being orbited)

Antonym:

aphelion (apoapsis in solar orbit; the point in the orbit of a planet or comet that is at the greatest distance from the sun)

 Context examples 

The comet is currently 260 million miles (420 million kilometers) from the Sun and will reach its closest point, or perihelion, on Dec. 8, 2019, at a distance of about 190 million miles (300 million kilometers).

(Newly Discovered Comet Is Likely Interstellar Visitor, NASA)

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, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)