Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A luminous spot on a lunar halo.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A bright spot on a lunar halo, produced by refraction through a preponderating number of ice-crystals floating perpendicularly or vertically; a mock moon.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Meteor.) A mock moon; an image of the moon which sometimes appears at the point of intersection of two lunar halos. Cf.
parhelion .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A bright, circular
spot , sometimes seen on alunar halo , caused byrefraction throughice crystals
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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When there are two suns visible, or two moons, the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_, and the mock moon a _paraselene_.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 Various
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Of such are the records of auroral displays, parhelions, paraselene, lunar halos, fog bows, irridescent clouds, refracted images of mountains and mirage generally.
The Worst Journey in the World Antarctic 1910-1913 Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922
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Beneath the glamour of the magic night, the weird paraselene of the moon's phenomenon, the glow of the volcano, the noises, the men whispered of one thing only -- Gold!
A Man to His Mate Stockton [Illustrator] Mulford 1906
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A perfect paraselene is, I am convinced, an extremely rare thing, much rarer than a perfect parhelion
Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska Hudson Stuck 1891
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This morning it was calm and clear save for a light misty veil of ice crystals through which the moon shone with scarce clouded brilliancy, surrounded with bright cruciform halo and white paraselene.
Scott's Last Expedition Volume I Robert Falcon Scott 1890
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All day it has been blowing hard, 30 to 60 miles an hour; it has never looked very dark overhead, but a watery cirrus has been in evidence for some time, causing well marked paraselene.
Scott's Last Expedition Volume I Robert Falcon Scott 1890
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On the evening of November 11, there was a brilliant paraselene, two distinct halos and eight false moons being visible in the southern sky.
The North Pole Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club 1888
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When there are two suns visible, or two moons, the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_, and the mock moon a _paraselene_.
Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822
qms commented on the word paraselene
Illusions might come from Fellini
Or wonders from work of a genie,
And in right condition
The moon’s a magician,
As witness the paraselene.
March 10, 2018