Last revised: 2026-10-18
17 · Exceptional phenomena
| English | 中文 | Gloss | Termonline |
|---|---|---|---|
| comet | 彗星Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | A body on a long, flattened path and trailing a tail; known in old Chinese as the broom star. The comet chart on the Mawangdui silk manuscript is the earliest surviving chart of comet forms. | TermonlineAstronomy · 太阳系 · 2024 |
| deluding star | 孛星Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | A class of body recorded in the dynastic treatises on astronomy alongside comets, named for the rays that shoot out from it; the two are usually entered together. | TermonlineAstronomy · History of Astronomy · 2024 |
| guest star | 客星Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | A star that appears suddenly among the asterisms and fades again. The guest star of 1054 at Tian-guan, as the histories record it, is now widely taken to be an account of a supernova. | TermonlineAstronomy · History of Astronomy · 2024 |
| meteor | 流星Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | A brief streak across the night sky, the trace of dust burning up as it enters the atmosphere; in numbers it becomes a meteor shower. | TermonlineAstronomy · 太阳系 · 2024 |
| meteorite | 陨石Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | A fragment of a meteoroid that reaches the ground. The histories record such falls as stars raining down, or a stone falling at such-and-such a place. | — |
| solar prominence | 日珥Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | Flamelike gas thrown out beyond the sun’s limb, visible to the naked eye in a total eclipse. The “three flames” of one oracle-bone record were once read as a prominence, a reading still disputed. | TermonlineAstronomy · 太阳 · 2024 |
| sunspot | 黑子Celestial phenomena · other phenomena | A dark patch on the sun’s photosphere. Chinese records of it are numerous; the entry in the Han History’s Treatise on the Five Phases for 28 BCE is among the most often cited. | near: 黑子本影Astronomy · 太阳 |
← Previous: 16 · Coordinates and culmination (modern) ｜ Index ｜ Next: 18 · Observational instruments (further)