Earth & SkyGreek → English
Coronagraph
/kəˈroʊnəɡræf/noun
A telescope attachment that blocks a bright disc so the fainter halo around it can be observed.
The Greek roots
κορώνη
korṓnē
anything curved, wreath
γράφειν
gráphein
to write, record
Literally: “wreath writer”
The story of the word
Bernard Lyot built the first workable one at the Pic du Midi in 1930: an occulting disc that hides the sun's face so the corona can be photographed on any clear morning instead of during the few minutes of a total eclipse. Corona is Latin for wreath or crown, and is generally traced back to Greek κορώνη, a word for anything bent or hooked, including a crow's beak. The same trick now hunts planets, blocking the star rather than the sun.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1930s
Same family
coronacoronarycrowncoronet
In a sentence
The coronagraph caught a mass ejection leaving the sun's western limb.
Without a coronagraph you would be waiting years for an eclipse to see this.