Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Canopus |
CanopusNoun1. Supergiant star 650 light years from Earth; second brightest star in the sky. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "Canopus" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1258. (references) |
Etymology: Canopus \Ca*no"pus\, noun. [Latin expression Canopus, from the Greek expression, town of Egypt.]. (Websters 1913) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Literature | Canopus The Egyptian god of water. The Chaldeans worshipped fire, and sent all the other gods a challenge, which was accepted by a priest of Canopus. The Chaldeans lighted a vast fire round the god Canopus, when the Egyptian deity spouted out torrents of water and quenched the fire, thereby obtaining the triumph of water over fire. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Canopus is, according to the Hipparcos satellite, 310 light years (96 parsecs) from Earth. Before Hipparcos, distance measurements for the star varied very widely, up to as much as 1200 light years; had the latter been correct Canopus would have been one of the most powerful stars in our galaxy. As is, it is still at least 30,000 times brighter than the sun and the most powerful star within 700 light years or so. It is much more luminous, intrinsically, than the sole star that appears brighter than it from Earth -- Sirius is a mere 22 times more luminous than our sun, and depends on being much closer to us to beat its rival. In fact, for a large fraction of stars in the local stellar neighbourhood, Canopus is the "brightest star in the sky".
The difficulty in measuring Canopus' distance stemmed from its unusual nature. The usual classification for Canopus is F0 IA-II, and F-class bright supergiants are rare and poorly understood; they may be stars in the process of evolving to or away from red giant status. This in turn made it difficult to guess how intrinsically bright it is and so how far away it might be. Direct measurement was the only way to solve the problem, and as it was too far away for earth-based parallax observations to be made, a precise distance had to wait until the Space Age.
The name "Canopus" has two common derivations, both listed in Richard Hinckley Allen's touchstone of stellar mythology, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning; which is correct is a matter of conjecture. One comes from the legend of the Trojan War. As the constellation Carina is part of the now-obsolete, gigantic Argo Navis constellation, which represented the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts, the brightest star in the constellation was given the name of a ship's pilot from another Greek legend -- Canopus was the pilot of Menelaus' ship on his quest to retrieve Helen of Troy after she was taken by Paris.
The other etymology of the name is that it comes from the Egyptian Coptic Kahi Nub ("Golden Earth"), which refers to the way it would appear near the horizon in Egypt and be correspondingly reddened by atmospheric extinction from that position. There is also a ruined ancient Egyptian port, apparently specifically named for the star, near the mouth of the Nile (in fact, its site was the location of the Battle of the Nile).
Due to its brightness and position away from the orbital plane of our solar system (the latter being in contrast to Sirius' position), Canopus is often used by American space probes for navigational purposes, using a special camera known as a "Canopus Star Tracker" in combination with a "Sun Tracker".
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Canopus."
Crosswords: Canopus |
| English words defined with "Canopus": Canonship, Carina. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "Canopus": Canopic Vases ♦ Misnomers. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Boats of SubDiv 17, Asiatic Fleet, moored alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) at Tsingtao, China, circa 1930. Identifiable submarines present include S-36 (SS-141), S-39 (SS-144), S-37 (SS-142) and S-41 (SS-146). Note Sailors relaxing on deck, Chinese men on board the submarines, and 4"/50 deck guns.Credit: NAVY. |  | Nested between sister submarines S-40 (SS-145), at left, and S-41 (SS-146), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) off Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note these submarines' 4"/50 deck guns.Credit: NAVY. |
 | Nested between sister submarines S-41 (SS-146), at left, and S-40 (SS-145), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) at Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note awnings spread aft on these submarines.Credit: NAVY. |  | Firing her 4"/50 deck gun during gunnery exercises in Philippine waters, circa 1933-1934. The motor launch in the foreground is from USS Canopus (AS-9).Credit: NAVY. |
| Nested between sister submarines S-40 (SS-145), at left, and S-41 (SS-146), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) off Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note these submarines' 4"/50 deck guns.Credit: NAVY. | | Nested between sister submarines S-41 (SS-146), at left, and S-40 (SS-145), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) at Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note awnings spread aft on these submarines.Credit: NAVY. |
| Nested between sister submarines S-40 (SS-145), at left, and S-41 (SS-146), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) off Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note these submarines' 4"/50 deck guns.Credit: NAVY. | | Nested between sister submarines S-41 (SS-146), at left, and S-40 (SS-145), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) at Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note awnings spread aft on these submarines.Credit: NAVY. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Canopus" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 50.00% of the time. "Canopus" is used about 4 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 50% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Noun (proper) | 25% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Noun (plural) | 25% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 4 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
canopus | 369 |
canopus procoder | 112 |
100 advc canopus | 91 |
canopus procoder tutorial | 35 |
canopus xplode | 34 |
canopus coder download pro | 34 |
canopus coder manual pro | 23 |
canopus download procoder | 20 |
canopus coder pro | 15 |
advc100 canopus | 14 |
canopus en español manual procoder | 14 |
canopus imaginate | 12 |
50 advc canopus | 11 |
canopus advc 1394 | 10 |
advc canopus | 10 |
canopus edius | 9 |
canopus dvstorm | 9 |
canopus pro | 9 |
canopus uss | 8 |
canopus codec dv | 7 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Words rhyming with "Canopus" (pronounced 'Ca*no"pus'): Apus, Campus, Carpus, Cippus, Corpus, Dipterocarpus, Encarpus, Eumolpus, Euripus, grampus, hippocampus, Labipalpus, lupus, mesohippus, metacarpus, Miohippus, mopus, Opus, Orohippus, Palpus, Pappus, Pedipalpus, Pithecanthropus, Pliohippus, Porpus, Protohippus, rumpus, Scapus. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-n-o-p-s-u" | |
-1 letter: capons, uncaps. | |
-2 letters: canso, capon, capos, conus, coups, punas, scaup, uncap, uncos. | |
-3 letters: anus, cans, capo, caps, cons, cops, coup, cups, cusp, naos, naps, nous, ocas, onus, opus, pacs, pans, pons, puna, puns, scan, scop, scup, snap, soap, soup, span, spun, unco, upas, upon. | |
-4 letters: asp, can, cap, con, cop, cos, cup, nap, nos, nus, oca, ons, ops, pac, pan, pas, pun, pus, sac, sap, sau, son, sop, sou, spa, sun, sup, uns, upo, ups. | |
-5 letters: an, as, na, no, nu, on, op, os, pa, so, un, up, us. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-c-n-o-p-s-u" | |
+2 letters: noncampus, occupants. | |
+3 letters: cantaloups, postlaunch, postulancy, pugnacious, syncarpous. | |
+4 letters: cacophonous, campgrounds, cantaloupes, cappuccinos, copulations, cornucopias, cuspidation, nucleoplasm, occupancies, occupations, peculations, precautions, proconsular, procrustean, punchboards, punctations, punctuators, saponaceous, speculation, spiculation. | |
+5 letters: captiousness, comeuppances, computations, counterpanes, counterparts, counterplans, counterplays, counterpleas, cupellations, cuspidations, duplications, exculpations, inauspicious, inculpations, necrophagous, nucleocapsid, nucleoplasms, packinghouse, pectinaceous, percutaneous, pertinacious, picornavirus, porcelaneous, postulancies, preannounces, precancerous, proconsulate, procurations, publications, pugnaciously, punctuations, spaciousness, speculations, spiculations, stupefaction, superorganic, supplication, transpicuous. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)43 61 6E 6F 70 75 73 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-.-. .- -. --- .--. ..- ... |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000011 01100001 01101110 01101111 01110000 01110101 01110011 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)C a n o p u s |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0043 0061 006E 006F 0070 0075 0073 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)37678081828785 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions: Internet 8. Rhymes | 9. Anagrams 10. Orthography 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
