reflecting circle

The Sailor's Word-Book

An instrument used instead of a sextant, quintant, or quadrant; but the quintant embraces as much viz. 152 degrees. The instrument reflects a celestial or any distant object so as to bring the image into contact with any object seen direct, by which their angular distance is measured, as in lunar distances.

Related Words

Reflecting
·p.pr. & ·vb.n. of <<Reflect>>. II. Reflecting ·adj Throwing back light, heat, ·etc., as a mirror o...

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language
Circle
·noun Compass; circuit; inclosure. II. Circle ·noun To move around; to revolve around. III. Circle...

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language
circle
A plane figure bounded by a line called the circumference, everywhere equally distant from a point w...

The Sailor's Word-Book
Dress circle
·add. ·- A gallery or circle in a theater, generally the first above the floor, in which originally ...

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language
Parquet circle
·add. ·- That part of the lower floor of a theater with seats at the rear of the parquet and beneath...

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language
antarctic circle
One of the lesser circles of the sphere, on the south parallel of the equator, and 23-1/2° from the ...

The Sailor's Word-Book
great circle
One whose assumed plane passes through the centre of the sphere, dividing it equally. ...

The Sailor's Word-Book
lesser circle
One whose plane does not pass through the centre of the sphere, and therefore divides it unequally. ...

The Sailor's Word-Book
great-circle sailing
Is a method for determining a series of points in an arc of a great circle between two points on the...

The Sailor's Word-Book
circle of perpetual apparition
A circle of the heavens parallel to the equator, and at a distance from the pole of any place equal ...

The Sailor's Word-Book