The fixed stars (from the Latin stellae fixae) are celestial objects that do not seem to move in relation to the other stars of the night sky. Hence, a fixed star is any star except for the Sun. A nebula or other starlike object may also be called a fixed star. People in many cultures have imagined that the stars form pictures in the sky called constellations. In ancient Greek astronomy, the stars were believed to exist on a giant celestial sphere, or firmament, that revolved around the Earth daily.
Read more about Fixed Stars: Origination of Name, The Fixed Stars Are not Fixed, The Fixed Stars in Classical Mechanics
Famous quotes containing the words fixed stars, fixed and/or stars:
“Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificence of the fixed stars.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)