Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The period of time, just under 19 years, between successive lunar or solar eclipses occurring when the sun, earth, and moon are in the same positions relative to one another.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun history A period of 3600 years.
  • noun astronomy A period of 223 synodic months (approximately 18 years 11 days 8 hours), after which the relative positions of the earth, sun and moon recur, used to predict eclipses.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Medieval Greek, from a misinterpretation of Greek saros, Babylonian astronomical cycle of 3,600 years, from Akkadian šār, šāru, the number 3,600, from Sumerian šár.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek, from Akkadian.

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Examples

  • The saros cycle predicts that, following a solar or lunar eclipse, a similar eclipse will occur 223 lunar months later.

    The Antikythera Mechanism 2006

  • The complicated meshing of the gears is a physical representation of the so-called Callippic and saros astronomical cycles.

    Archive 2006-11-01 2006

  • The complicated meshing of the gears is a physical representation of the so-called Callippic and saros astronomical cycles.

    The Antikythera Mechanism 2006

  • The saros cycle predicts that, following a solar or lunar eclipse, a similar eclipse will occur 223 lunar months later.

    Archive 2006-11-01 2006

  • The decades of a saros would not be long enough for me to write all they meant to the ragged apprentice boy I was.

    The Shadow of the Torturer Wolfe, Gene 1980

  • These eclipses belonged to 26 different saros series and included all the umbral eclipses of the 19 years preceding 1938, in order to include all the saros series now running which produce umbral eclipses.

    The History of the Former Han Dynasty 1938

  • Conchoid curves are obtained for those eclipses in which the moon's penumbra reaches the northern limits to which the sun is visible; such eclipses are those near the ends of a saros or exeligmos series.

    The History of the Former Han Dynasty 1938

  • Eclipses recur at intervals of 6585.3 days (18 years and 10 or 11 days), which period is called a saros.

    The History of the Former Han Dynasty 1938

  • While this is only a small proportion of the 152 saros series in Oppolzer's Kanon, the uniformity of results makes them probably typical.

    The History of the Former Han Dynasty 1938

  • From this event to the Persian conquest was a period of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called _saros_.

    God and my Neighbour Robert Blatchford 1897

Comments

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  • saros 223 synodic month period of sun and moon

    January 17, 2007