Earth & SkyGreek → English
Paraselene
/ˌpærəsɪˈliːni/noun
A bright spot appearing beside the moon, produced by ice crystals in high cloud.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside
σελήνη
selḗnē
moon
Literally: “beside the moon”
The story of the word
A moon dog, the night version of the sun dog. Seventeenth-century observers who wrote up these apparitions needed a Greek name to sit alongside parhelion, the mock sun, and built one on σελήνη. Berzelius later reached for the same moon when he named selenium in 1817, because the new element kept company with tellurium, which Klaproth had named for the earth in 1798.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
seleniumselenographyparhelionSelene
In a sentence
A paraselene hung twenty-two degrees to the left of the full moon, faint but unmistakable.
Cold nights with high cirrus are the best time to look for a paraselene.