150-528: The Qixi Festival ( Chinese : 七夕 ; pinyin : Qīxī ; lit. 'Seventh Night [of the seventh month]'), also known as the Qiqiao Festival ( Chinese : 乞巧 ; pinyin : Qǐqiǎo ; lit. 'Beseeching craftsmanship'), is a Chinese festival celebrating the annual meeting of Zhinü and Niulang in Chinese mythology . The festival is celebrated on the seventh day of
300-448: A convection zone about the core that evenly distributes the 'ash' from the fusion reaction within the core region. The overlying atmosphere is in radiative equilibrium . This is in contrast to the Sun, which has a radiation zone centered on the core with an overlying convection zone. The energy flux from Vega has been precisely measured against standard light sources. At 5,480 Å ,
450-463: A declination of +38.78°, Vega can only be viewed at latitudes north of 51° S . Therefore, it does not rise at all anywhere in Antarctica or in the southernmost part of South America, including Punta Arenas , Chile (53° S). At latitudes to the north of 51° N , Vega remains continuously above the horizon as a circumpolar star . Around July 1, Vega reaches midnight culmination when it crosses
600-416: A nuclear fusion process that combines protons to form helium nuclei through intermediary nuclei of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. This process becomes dominant at a temperature of about 17 million K, which is slightly higher than the core temperature of the Sun, but is less efficient than the Sun's proton–proton chain fusion reaction. The CNO cycle is highly temperature sensitive, which results in
750-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
900-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
1050-529: A third star, forms a symbolic bridge between the two stars. It was said that if it rains on this day, it was caused by a river sweeping away the magpie bridge or that the rain is the tears of the separated couple. Based on the legend of a flock of magpies forming a bridge to reunite the couple, a pair of magpies came to symbolize conjugal happiness and faithfulness. The eating customs of Qixi Festival vary from place to place, and are called eating Qiao food. The most famous traditional food people eat on Qixi Festival
1200-503: A 1% chance of being a false positive. Considering the amplitude of the signal, the authors estimated a minimum mass of 21.9 ± 5.1 Earth masses, but considering the very oblique rotation of Vega itself of only 6.2° from Earth's perspective, the planet may be aligned to this plane as well, giving it an actual mass of 203 ± 47 Earth masses. The researchers also detected a faint 196.4 +1.6 −1.9 -day signal which could translate to 80 ± 21 Earth masses ( 740 ± 190 at 6.2° inclination) but
1350-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
1500-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
1650-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
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#17327838532861800-435: A coherent manner, resulting in periodic pulsations in the star's luminosity. Although Vega fits the physical profile for this type of variable, other observers have found no such variation. Thus the variability was thought to possibly be the result of systematic errors in measurement. However, a 2007 article surveyed these and other results, and concluded that "A conservative analysis of the foregoing results suggests that Vega
1950-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
2100-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
2250-488: A lower frequency (toward the red), or to a higher frequency (toward the blue) if the motion is toward the Earth. Thus the velocity can be measured from the amount of shift of the star's spectrum. Precise measurements of this blueshift give a value of −13.9 ± 0.9 km/s . The minus sign indicates a relative motion toward the Earth. Motion transverse to the line of sight causes the position of Vega to shift with respect to
2400-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
2550-411: A parallax of 0.314″ for the star system 61 Cygni , Struve revised his value for Vega's parallax to nearly double the original estimate. This change cast further doubt on Struve's data. Thus most astronomers at the time, including Struve, credited Bessel with the first published parallax result. However, Struve's initial result was actually close to the currently accepted value of 0.129″, as determined by
2700-451: A planet with <6 M E at 65 AU would introduce interior asymetric structures that are not seen in the disk of Vega. Any gap-opening planet would need to be less massive. Additionally the inner edge of the inner disk was inferred to be 3-5 AU. Vega shows also evidence for hot infrared excess at the sub-AU region. The inner boundary of the warm debris might indicate that there is a Neptune -mass planet inside, shepherding it. The name
2850-399: A planetary system still undergoing formation. Determining the nature of the planet has not been straightforward; a 2002 paper hypothesizes that the clumps are caused by a roughly Jupiter-mass planet on an eccentric orbit . Dust would collect in orbits that have mean-motion resonances with this planet—where their orbital periods form integer fractions with the period of the planet—producing
3000-510: A planetary system. The disk was also observed with ALMA in 2020, the LMT in 2022 and with Hubble STIS and JWST MIRI in 2024. The ALMA image did resolve the outer disk for the first time. The Hubble observation is the first image of the disk in scattered light and found an outer halo made up of small dust grains. JWST observations also detected the Halo, the outer disk and for the first time
3150-452: A process known as the precession of the equinoxes . A complete precession cycle requires 25,770 years, during which time the pole of the Earth's rotation follows a circular path across the celestial sphere that passes near several prominent stars. At present the pole star is Polaris , but around 12,000 BCE the pole was pointed only five degrees away from Vega. Through precession, the pole will again pass near Vega around 14,000 CE. Vega
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#17327838532863300-412: A result, there is a variation of temperature across the star's photosphere that reaches a maximum at the poles. From Earth, Vega is observed from the direction of one of these poles. Based on observations of more infrared radiation than expected, Vega appears to have a circumstellar disk of dust . This dust is likely to be the result of collisions between objects in an orbiting debris disk , which
3450-501: A second gap between the inner disk and the hot dust around the star. This hot infrared excess lies within about 0.2 AU or closer and is made up of small grains, like graphite and iron and manganese oxides, which was previously verified. Observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in 1997 revealed an "elongated bright central region" that peaked at 9″ ( 70 AU ) to the northeast of Vega. This
3600-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
3750-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
3900-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
4050-586: A smaller orbit. Using a coronagraph on the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in 2005, astronomers were able to further constrain the size of a planet orbiting Vega to no more than 5–10 times the mass of Jupiter. The issue of possible clumps in the debris disc was revisited in 2007 using newer, more sensitive instrumentation on the Plateau de Bure Interferometer . The observations showed that the debris ring
4200-421: A stream; 佳期如夢， Their happy date seems but a dream. 忍顧鶴橋歸路。 How can they bear a separate homeward way? 兩情若是久長時， If love between both sides can last for aye, 又豈在朝朝暮暮。 Why need they stay together night and day? (Translated by Xu Yuanchong ) Interactive Google doodles have been launched since the 2009 Qixi Festival to mark the occasion. The latest
4350-662: A table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included Vega for this star. It is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names . Vega can often be seen near the zenith in the mid-northern latitudes during the evening in the Northern Hemisphere summer. From mid-southern latitudes, it can be seen low above the northern horizon during the Southern Hemisphere winter. With
4500-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
4650-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
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4800-401: Is 12.9 km/s . Although Vega is at present only the fifth-brightest star in the night sky, the star is slowly brightening as proper motion causes it to approach the Sun. Vega will make its closest approach in an estimated 264,000 years at a perihelion distance of 13.2 ly (4.04 pc). Based on this star's kinematic properties, it appears to belong to a stellar association called
4950-413: Is 2.362 ± 0.012 solar radii , while the equatorial radius is 2.818 ± 0.013 solar radii. ) From the Earth, this bulge is being viewed from the direction of its pole, producing the overly large radius estimate. The local surface gravity at the poles is greater than at the equator, which produces a variation in effective temperature over the star: the polar temperature is near 10,000 K , while
5100-522: Is 200 ± 100 million years , and they have an average space velocity of 16.5 km/s . One of the early results from the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) was the discovery of excess infrared flux coming from Vega, beyond what would be expected from the star alone. This excess was measured at wavelengths of 25, 60 and 100 μm , and came from within an angular radius of 10 arcseconds ( 10″ ) centered on
5250-456: Is 327.78 mas/y , which results in angular movement of a degree every 11,000 years . In the galactic coordinate system , the space velocity components of Vega are (U, V, W) = ( −16.1 ± 0.3 , −6.3 ± 0.8 , −7.7 ± 0.3 ) km/s , for a net space velocity of 19 km/s . The radial component of this velocity—in the direction of the Sun—is −13.9 km/s , while the transverse velocity
5400-465: Is 3 × 10 times the mass of the Earth (around 7.5 times more massive than the asteroid belt ). Production of the dust would require collisions between asteroids in a population corresponding to the Kuiper Belt around the Sun. Thus the dust is more likely created by a debris disk around Vega, rather than from a protoplanetary disk as was earlier thought. The inner boundary of the debris disk
5550-631: Is Qiao Guo, which has a history of more than one thousand years since it became popular during the Song dynasty. The main ingredients are flour, oil. and honey, sometimes adding sesame, peanuts, kernels, roses, and other different ingredients. After mixing those ingredients, the people then deep-fry them. Beyond that, people would eat crunchy candy, refreshments, and fruits together, expressing the people's pursuit of ingenuity, family health, and happy life wishes. Many pieces of literature, such as poems, songs, and operas, have been written for this festival and about
5700-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
5850-655: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
6000-408: Is a hole in the center of the disk with a radius of no less than 80 AU . Following the discovery of an infrared excess around Vega, other stars have been found that display a similar anomaly that is attributable to dust emission. As of 2002, about 400 of these stars have been found, and they have come to be termed "Vega-like" or "Vega-excess" stars. It is believed that these may provide clues to
6150-459: Is a rapidly rotating star that is being viewed from the direction of its pole of rotation. Observations by the CHARA array in 2005–06 confirmed this deduction. The pole of Vega—its axis of rotation—is inclined no more than five degrees from the line-of-sight to the Earth. At the high end of estimates for the rotation velocity for Vega is 236.2 ± 3.7 km/s along the equator, much higher than
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6300-441: Is about 40 times the Sun's. Because it is rotating rapidly, approximately once every 16.5 hours, and seen nearly pole-on, its apparent luminosity, calculated assuming it was the same brightness all over, is about 57 times the Sun's. If Vega is variable, then it may be a Delta Scuti type with a period of about 0.107 day. Most of the energy produced at Vega's core is generated by the carbon–nitrogen–oxygen cycle ( CNO cycle ),
6450-626: Is analogous to the Kuiper belt in the Solar System . Stars that display an infrared excess due to dust emission are termed Vega-like stars. Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope show that the disk is exceptionally smooth, with no evidence of shaping by massive planets, though there is some evidence that there may be one or more Neptune-mass planets closer to the star. α Lyrae ( Latinised to Alpha Lyrae )
6600-509: Is believed to be derived from the Arabic term Al Nesr al Waki النسر الواقع which appeared in the Al Achsasi al Mouakket star catalogue and was translated into Latin as Vultur Cadens , "the falling eagle/vulture". The constellation was represented as a vulture in ancient Egypt , and as an eagle or vulture in ancient India . The Arabic name then appeared in the western world in
6750-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
6900-404: Is more convenient for astronomers, since Vega is not always available for calibration and varies in brightness. The UBV photometric system measures the magnitude of stars through ultraviolet , blue and yellow filters, producing U , B and V values, respectively. Vega is one of six A0V stars that were used to set the initial mean values for this photometric system when it was introduced in
7050-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
7200-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
7350-425: Is only marginally less abundant and sulfur abundance is about 50% of solar. On the other hand, Vega has only 10% to 30% of the solar abundance for most other major elements with barium and scandium below 10%. The unusually low metallicity of Vega makes it a weak Lambda Boötis star . However, the reason for the existence of such chemically peculiar, spectral class A0–F0 stars remains unclear. One possibility
7500-407: Is quite likely variable in the 1–2% range, with possible occasional excursions to as much as 4% from the mean". Also, a 2011 article affirms that "The long-term (year-to-year) variability of Vega was confirmed". Vega became the first solitary main-sequence star beyond the Sun known to be an X-ray emitter when in 1979 it was observed from an imaging X-ray telescope launched on an Aerobee 350 from
7650-428: Is rapidly rotating may challenge some of the underlying assumptions that were based on it being spherically symmetric. With the viewing angle and rotation rate of Vega now better known, this will allow improved instrument calibrations. In astronomy, those elements with higher atomic numbers than helium are termed "metals". The metallicity of Vega's photosphere is only about 32% of the abundance of heavy elements in
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#17327838532867800-400: Is roughly one billion years, a tenth of the Sun's. The current age of this star is about 455 million years, or up to about half its expected total main-sequence lifespan. After leaving the main sequence, Vega will become a class-M red giant and shed much of its mass, finally becoming a white dwarf . At present, Vega has more than twice the mass of the Sun and its bolometric luminosity
7950-405: Is significantly oblate like those two planets. When the radius of Vega was measured to high accuracy with an interferometer , it resulted in an unexpectedly large estimated value of 2.73 ± 0.01 times the radius of the Sun . This is 60% larger than the radius of the star Sirius, while stellar models indicated it should only be about 12% larger. However, this discrepancy can be explained if Vega
8100-526: Is smooth and symmetric. No evidence was found of the blobs reported earlier, casting doubts on the hypothesized giant planet. The smooth structure has been confirmed in follow-up observations by Hughes et al. (2012) and the Herschel Space Telescope . Although a planet has yet to be directly observed around Vega, the presence of a planetary system cannot yet be ruled out. Thus there could be smaller, terrestrial planets orbiting closer to
8250-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
8400-467: Is that the chemical peculiarity may be the result of diffusion or mass loss, although stellar models show that this would normally only occur near the end of a star's hydrogen-burning lifespan. Another possibility is that the star formed from an interstellar medium of gas and dust that was unusually metal-poor. The observed helium to hydrogen ratio in Vega is 0.030 ± 0.005 , which is about 40% lower than
8550-472: Is the approximate shape of a right triangle , with Vega located at its right angle . The Summer Triangle is recognizable in the northern skies for there are few other bright stars in its vicinity. Astrophotography , the photography of celestial objects, began in 1840 when John William Draper took an image of the Moon using the daguerreotype process. On 17 July 1850, Vega became the first star (other than
8700-524: Is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Lyra . It has the Bayer designation α Lyrae , which is Latinised to Alpha Lyrae and abbreviated Alpha Lyr or α Lyr . This star is relatively close at only 25 light-years (7.7 parsecs ) from the Sun , and one of the most luminous stars in the Sun's neighborhood . It is the fifth-brightest star in the night sky , and the second-brightest star in
8850-595: Is the brightest of the successive northern pole stars. In 210,000 years, Vega will become the brightest star in the night sky, and will peak in brightness in 290,000 years with an apparent magnitude of –0.81. This star lies at a vertex of a widely spaced asterism called the Summer Triangle , which consists of Vega plus the two first-magnitude stars Altair , in Aquila , and Deneb in Cygnus . This formation
9000-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
9150-586: Is the star's Bayer designation . The traditional name Vega (earlier Wega ) comes from a loose transliteration of the Arabic word wāqi' ( Arabic : واقع ) meaning "falling" or "landing", via the phrase an-nasr al-wāqi' ( Arabic : النّسر الْواقع ), "the falling eagle". In 2016, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included
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#17327838532869300-422: Is too faint to claim as a real signal with available data. Observations of the disk with JWST MIRI did find a very circular face-on disk. The morphology indicate that there is no planet more massive than Saturn beyond 10 AU. The disk has a gap at around 60 AU. Gap-opening planets are inferred for disks around other stars and the team tests this idea for Vega by running simulations. The simulations have shown that
9450-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
9600-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
9750-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
9900-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
10050-528: The Alfonsine tables , which were drawn up between 1215 and 1270 by order of King Alfonso X . Medieval astrolabes of England and Western Europe used the names Wega and Alvaca, and depicted it and Altair as birds. Among the northern Polynesian people, Vega was known as whetu o te tau , the year star. For a period of history it marked the start of their new year when the ground would be prepared for planting. Eventually this function became denoted by
10200-465: The Hipparcos astrometry satellite. The brightness of a star, as seen from Earth, is measured with a standardized, logarithmic scale . This apparent magnitude is a numerical value that decreases in value with increasing brightness of the star. The faintest stars visible to the unaided eye are sixth magnitude, while the brightest in the night sky, Sirius , is of magnitude −1.46. To standardize
10350-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
10500-491: The CHARA array at Mt. Wilson in 2006 and the Infrared Optical Telescope Array at Mt. Hopkins in 2011, revealed evidence for an inner dust band around Vega. Originating within 8 AU of the star, this exozodiacal dust may be evidence of dynamical perturbations within the system. This may be caused by an intense bombardment of comets or meteors , and may be evidence for the existence of
10650-568: The Castor Moving Group . However, Vega may be much older than this group, so the membership remains uncertain. This group contains about 16 stars, including Alpha Librae , Alpha Cephei , Castor , Fomalhaut and Vega. All members of the group are moving in nearly the same direction with similar space velocities . Membership in a moving group implies a common origin for these stars in an open cluster that has since become gravitationally unbound. The estimated age of this moving group
10800-657: The Double Seventh Festival , the Chinese Valentine's Day , the Night of Sevens , or the Magpie Festival . The popular tale is a love story between Zhinü ( 織女 , the weaver girl, symbolizing Vega ) and Niulang ( 牛郎 , the cowherd, symbolizing Altair ). Niulang was often abused by his sister-in-law. They eventually kicked him out of the house, and gave him nothing but an old cow. One day,
10950-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
11100-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
11250-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
11400-632: The Pleiades . The Assyrians named this pole star Dayan-same, the "Judge of Heaven", while in Akkadian it was Tir-anna, "Life of Heaven". In Babylonian astronomy , Vega may have been one of the stars named Dilgan, "the Messenger of Light". To the ancient Greeks , the constellation Lyra was formed from the harp of Orpheus , with Vega as its handle. For the Roman Empire , the start of autumn
11550-628: The White Sands Missile Range . In 1983, Vega became the first star found to have a disk of dust. The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) discovered an excess of infrared radiation coming from the star, and this was attributed to energy emitted by the orbiting dust as it was heated by the star. Vega's spectral class is A0V, making it a blue-tinged white main-sequence star that is fusing hydrogen to helium in its core. Since more massive stars use their fusion fuel more quickly than smaller ones, Vega's main-sequence lifetime
11700-484: The corona for this star must be very weak or non-existent. However, as the pole of Vega is facing Earth and a polar coronal hole may be present, confirmation of a corona as the likely source of the X-rays detected from Vega (or the region very close to Vega) may be difficult as most of any coronal X-rays would not be emitted along the line of sight. Using spectropolarimetry , a magnetic field has been detected on
11850-443: The meridian at that time. Complementarily, Vega swoops down and kisses the horizon at true North at midnight on Dec 31/Jan 1, as seen from 51° N. Each night the positions of the stars appear to change as the Earth rotates. However, when a star is located along the Earth's axis of rotation, it will remain in the same position and thus is called a pole star . The direction of the Earth's axis of rotation gradually changes over time in
12000-447: The northern celestial hemisphere , after Arcturus . Vega has been extensively studied by astronomers, leading it to be termed "arguably the next most important star in the sky after the Sun". Vega was the northern pole star around 12,000 BCE and will be so again around the year 13,727, when its declination will be +86° 14′. Vega was the first star other than the Sun to have its image and spectrum photographed. It
12150-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
12300-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
12450-620: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Vega Vega
12600-430: The 1950s. The mean magnitudes for these six stars were defined as: U − B = B − V = 0. In effect, the magnitude scale has been calibrated so that the magnitude of these stars is the same in the yellow, blue and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum . Thus, Vega has a relatively flat electromagnetic spectrum in the visual region—wavelength range 350–850 nanometers , most of which can be seen with
12750-596: The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, dating back to the Zhou dynasty Classic of Poetry . Many describe the atmosphere of the festival or narrate related stories. This has left a valuable literary legacy which helps modern scholars better understand ancient Chinese customs, feelings, and opinions relating to the festival. 迢迢牽牛星， Far, far away, the Cowherd, 皎皎河漢女。 Fair, fair,
12900-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
13050-406: The Sun's atmosphere. (Compare this, for example, to a threefold metallicity abundance in the similar star Sirius as compared to the Sun.) For comparison, the Sun has an abundance of elements heavier than helium of about Z Sol = 0.0172 ± 0.002 . Thus, in terms of abundances, only about 0.54% of Vega consists of elements heavier than helium. Nitrogen is slightly more abundant, oxygen
13200-545: The Sun) to be photographed, when it was imaged by William Bond and John Adams Whipple at the Harvard College Observatory , also with a daguerreotype. In August 1872, Henry Draper took a photograph of Vega's spectrum , the first photograph of a star's spectrum showing absorption lines. Similar lines had already been identified in the spectrum of the Sun. In 1879, William Huggins used photographs of
13350-406: The Sun. In 2015, bright starspots were detected on the star's surface—the first such detection for a normal A-type star , and these features show evidence of rotational modulation with a period of 0.68 day. Vega has a rotation period of 16.3 hours, much faster than the Sun's rotational period but similar to, and slightly slower than, those of Jupiter and Saturn . Because of that, Vega
13500-404: The Sun. This may be caused by the disappearance of a helium convection zone near the surface. Energy transfer is instead performed by the radiative process , which may be causing an abundance anomaly through diffusion. The radial velocity of Vega is the component of this star's motion along the line-of-sight to the Earth. Movement away from the Earth will cause the light from Vega to shift to
13650-409: The Sun; both stars are at present approaching the midpoint of their main sequence lifetimes. Compared with the Sun, Vega has a lower abundance of elements heavier than helium . Vega is also a variable star —that is, a star whose brightness fluctuates. It is rotating rapidly with a speed of 236 km/s at the equator. This causes the equator to bulge outward due to centrifugal effects, and, as
13800-589: The Weaving Maid; 纖纖擢素手， Nimbly move her slender white fingers, 札札弄機杼。 Click-clack goes her spinning-loom. 終日不成章， All day she weaves, yet her web is still not done 泣涕零如雨。 And her tears fall like rain. 河漢清且淺， Clear and shallow the Milky Way, 相去復幾許？ They are not far apart! 盈盈一水間， But
13950-467: The background stars as the Earth orbits the Sun. Giuseppe Calandrelli noted stellar parallax in 1805-6 and came up with a 4-second value for the star which was a gross overestimate. The first person to publish a star's parallax was Friedrich G. W. von Struve , when he announced a value of 0.125 arcsecond ( 0.125″ ) for Vega. Friedrich Bessel was skeptical about Struve's data, and, when Bessel published
14100-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
14250-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
14400-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
14550-405: The equatorial temperature is about 8,152 K . This large temperature difference between the poles and the equator produces a strong gravity darkening effect. As viewed from the poles, this results in a darker (lower-intensity) limb than would normally be expected for a spherically symmetric star. The temperature gradient may also mean that Vega has a convection zone around the equator, while
14700-420: The festival activities also included customs that the common people partook in. Girls take part in worshipping the celestials ( 拜仙 ) during rituals. They go to the local temple to pray to Zhinü for wisdom. Paper items are usually burned as offerings. Girls may recite traditional prayers for dexterity in needlework, which symbolizes the traditional talents of a good spouse. Divination could take place to determine
14850-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
15000-428: The flux density is 3,650 Jy with an error margin of 2%. The visual spectrum of Vega is dominated by absorption lines of hydrogen; specifically by the hydrogen Balmer series with the electron at the n=2 principal quantum number . The lines of other elements are relatively weak, with the strongest being ionized magnesium , iron and chromium . The X-ray emission from Vega is very low, demonstrating that
15150-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
15300-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
15450-402: The human eye—so the flux densities are roughly equal; 2,000– 4,000 Jy . However, the flux density of Vega drops rapidly in the infrared , and is near 100 Jy at 5 micrometers . Photometric measurements of Vega during the 1930s appeared to show that the star had a low-magnitude variability on the order of ±0.03 magnitude (around ±2.8% luminosity). This range of variability
15600-475: The inner disk. The infrared observations also showed a gap at 60 AU for the first time. The dust interior of the outer disk is consistent with dust being dragged by the Poynting-Robertson effect . The inner edge of the inner disk is hidden behind the coronagraph , but it was inferred to be 3-5 AU from photometry. The star is also surrounded by hot infrared excess, located at the sub-AU region, leaving
15750-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
15900-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
16050-430: The magnitude scale, astronomers chose Vega and several similar stars and averaged their brightness to represent magnitude zero at all wavelengths. Thus, for many years, Vega was used as a baseline for the calibration of absolute photometric brightness scales. However, this is no longer the case, as the apparent magnitude zero point is now commonly defined in terms of a particular numerically specified flux . This approach
16200-648: The magpie, and so they built a bridge of magpies over the Silver River for them to meet. The Emperor of Heaven was also moved by the sight, and allowed this couple to meet on the Magpie Bridge once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. That was the origin of the Qixi Festival. During the Han dynasty, the practices were conducted in accordance with formal ceremonial state rituals. Over time,
16350-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
16500-416: The more distant background stars. Careful measurement of the star's position allows this angular movement, known as proper motion , to be calculated. Vega's proper motion is 202.03 ± 0.63 milliarcseconds (mas) per year in right ascension —the celestial equivalent of longitude —and 287.47 ± 0.54 mas/y in declination , which is equivalent to a change in latitude . The net proper motion of Vega
16650-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
16800-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
16950-511: The observed (i.e. projected ) rotational velocity because Vega is seen almost pole-on. This is 88% of the speed that would cause the star to start breaking up from centrifugal effects. This rapid rotation of Vega produces a pronounced equatorial bulge, so the radius of the equator is 19% larger than the polar radius, compared to just under 11% for Saturn, the most oblate of the Solar System's planets. (The estimated polar radius of this star
17100-655: The old cow suddenly spoke out, telling Niulang that there would be fairies bathing in the spring nearby that night. The fairy would stay there if she failed to go back to heaven before morning. In accordance with what the old cow said, Niulang saw those beautiful fairies in the spring, and fell in love with one of the beautiful fairies who was the heavenly weaver. In order to make her stay, he took her clothes that helped her to go back to heaven; this made her an ordinary earth woman without any power. They then got married and had two children. The Emperor of Heaven ( 玉皇大帝 , lit. ' The Jade Emperor ' ) found out about this and
17250-442: The order of 100 μm or less. To maintain this amount of dust in orbit around Vega, a continual source of replenishment would be required. A proposed mechanism for maintaining the dust was a disk of coalesced bodies that were in the process of collapsing to form a planet. Models fitted to the dust distribution around Vega indicate that it is a 120-astronomical-unit-radius circular disk viewed from nearly pole-on. In addition, there
17400-548: The origin of the Solar System . By 2005, the Spitzer Space Telescope had produced high-resolution infrared images of the dust around Vega. It was shown to extend out to 43″ ( 330 AU ) at a wavelength of 24 μm , 70″ ( 543 AU ) at 70 μm and 105″ ( 815 AU ) at 160 μm . These much wider disks were found to be circular and free of clumps, with dust particles ranging from 1– 50 μm in size. The estimated total mass of this dust
17550-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
17700-413: The possible dexterity in needlework. They make wishes for marrying someone who would be a good and loving husband. During the festival, girls make a display of their domestic skills. Traditionally, there would be contests amongst those who attempted to be the best in threading needles under low-light conditions, like the glow of an ember or of a half moon. Today, girls sometimes gather toiletries in honour of
17850-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
18000-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
18150-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
18300-457: The remainder of the atmosphere is likely to be in almost pure radiative equilibrium . By the Von Zeipel theorem , the local luminosity is higher at the poles. As a result, if Vega were viewed along the plane of its equator instead of almost pole-on, then its overall brightness would be lower. As Vega had long been used as a standard star for calibrating telescopes , the discovery that it
18450-589: The result of a relatively recent breakup of a moderate-sized (or larger) comet or asteroid, which then further fragmented as the result of collisions between the smaller components and other bodies. This dusty disk would be relatively young on the time scale of the star's age, and it will eventually be removed unless other collision events supply more dust. Observations, first with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer by David Ciardi and Gerard van Belle in 2001 and then later confirmed with
18600-405: The resulting clumpiness. In 2003, it was hypothesized that these clumps could be caused by a roughly Neptune -mass planet having migrated from 40 to 65 AU over 56 million years, an orbit large enough to allow the formation of smaller rocky planets closer to Vega. The migration of this planet would likely require gravitational interaction with a second, higher-mass planet in
18750-409: The romantic legend of two lovers, Zhinü and Niulang, who were the weaver girl and the cowherd, respectively. The tale of The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl has been celebrated in the Qixi Festival since the Han dynasty . The earliest-known reference to this famous myth dates back to more than 2,600 years ago, which was told in a poem from the Classic of Poetry . The festival has variously been called
18900-427: The seven maidens. The festival also held an importance for newlywed couples. Traditionally, they would worship the celestial couple for the last time and bid farewell to them ( 辭仙 ). The celebration stood as a symbol for a happy marriage and showed that the married woman was treasured by her new family. On this day, the Chinese gaze up at the sky to look for Vega and Altair shining in the Milky Way, while Deneb ,
19050-413: The seventh lunisolar month on the Chinese lunisolar calendar . A celebration of romantic love, the festival is often described as the traditional Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day . During the Qixi Festival, couples usually take part in traditional activities, like making gifts, gazing at the stars, and praying for a long and happy love. The festival is derived from Chinese mythology: people celebrate
19200-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
19350-490: The sky. (Translated by Betty Tseng) 纖雲弄巧， Clouds float like works of art, 飛星傳恨， Stars shoot with grief at heart. 銀漢迢迢暗渡。 Across the Milky Way the Cowherd meets the Maid. 金風玉露一相逢， When Autumn’s Golden Wind embraces Dew of Jade, 便勝却人間無數。 All the love scenes on earth, however many, fade. 柔情似水， Their tender love flows like
19500-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
19650-471: The spectra of Vega and similar stars to identify a set of twelve "very strong lines" that were common to this stellar category. These were later identified as lines from the Hydrogen Balmer series . Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified. The distance to Vega can be determined by measuring its parallax shift against
19800-441: The star by means of Poynting–Robertson drag . The latter is the result of radiation pressure creating an effective force that opposes the orbital motion of a dust particle, causing it to spiral inward. This effect is most pronounced for tiny particles that are closer to the star. Subsequent measurements of Vega at 193 μm showed a lower than expected flux for the hypothesized particles, suggesting that they must instead be on
19950-415: The star. At the measured distance of Vega, this corresponded to an actual radius of 80 astronomical units (AU), where an AU is the average radius of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. It was proposed that this radiation came from a field of orbiting particles with a dimension on the order of a millimetre, as anything smaller would eventually be removed from the system by radiation pressure or drawn into
20100-490: The star. The inclination of planetary orbits around Vega is likely to be closely aligned to the equatorial plane of this star. From the perspective of an observer on a hypothetical planet around Vega, the Sun would appear as a faint 4.3-magnitude star in the Columba constellation. In 2021, a paper analyzing 10 years of spectra of Vega detected a candidate 2.43-day signal around Vega, statistically estimated to have only
20250-519: The stream brims always between 脈脈不得語。 And, gazing at each other, they cannot speak. (Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang ) 銀燭秋光冷畫屏， A candle flame flickers against a dull painted screen on a cool autumn night, 輕羅小扇撲流螢。 She holds a small silk fan to flap away dashing fireflies. 天階夜色涼如水， Above her hang celestial bodies as frigid as deep water, 坐看牽牛織女星。 She sat there watching Altair of Aquila and Vega of Lyra pining for each other in
20400-511: The surface of Vega by a team of astronomers at the Observatoire du Pic du Midi . This is the first such detection of a magnetic field on a spectral class A star that is not an Ap chemically peculiar star . The average line of sight component of this field has a strength of −0.6 ± 0.3 gauss (G) . This is comparable to the mean magnetic field on the Sun. Magnetic fields of roughly 30 G have been reported for Vega, compared to about 1 G for
20550-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
20700-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
20850-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
21000-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
21150-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
21300-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
21450-605: Was based upon the hour at which Vega set below the horizon. In Chinese , 織女 ( Zhī Nǚ ), meaning Weaving Girl (asterism) , refers to an asterism consisting of Vega, ε Lyrae and ζ Lyrae . Consequently, the Chinese name for Vega is 織女一 ( Zhī Nǚ yī , English: the First Star of Weaving Girl ). In Chinese mythology , there is a love story of Qixi ( 七夕 ) in which Niulang ( 牛郎 , Altair ) and his two children ( β Aquilae and γ Aquilae ) are separated from their mother Zhinü ( 織女 , lit. "weaver girl", Vega) who
21600-407: Was estimated at 11″ ± 2″ , or 70– 100 AU . The disk of dust is produced as radiation pressure from Vega pushes debris from collisions of larger objects outward. However, continuous production of the amount of dust observed over the course of Vega's lifetime would require an enormous starting mass—estimated as hundreds of times the mass of Jupiter . Hence it is more likely to have been produced as
21750-526: Was furious, so he sent minions to escort the heavenly weaver back to heaven. Niulang was heartbroken. The old cow suddenly spoke out again, telling Niulang he could take his skin to make it into a flying coat to chase after them; and Niulang did. However, the Queen Mother of the West drew a Silver River ( The Milky Way ) in the sky and blocked his way. Meanwhile, the love between Niulang and the weaver moved
21900-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
22050-525: Was hypothesized as either a perturbation of the dust disk by a planet or else an orbiting object that was surrounded by dust. However, images by the Keck telescope had ruled out a companion down to magnitude 16, which would correspond to a body with more than 12 times the mass of Jupiter. Astronomers at the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii and at UCLA suggested that the image may indicate
22200-625: Was launched for the 2023 Qixi Festival. The Qixi festival inspired the Tanabata festival in Japan , Chilseok festival in Korea , and Thất Tịch festival in Vietnam . Offline Online Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
22350-486: Was near the limits of observational capability for that time, and so the subject of Vega's variability has been controversial. The magnitude of Vega was measured again in 1981 at the David Dunlap Observatory and showed some slight variability. Thus it was suggested that Vega showed occasional low-amplitude pulsations associated with a Delta Scuti variable . This is a category of stars that oscillate in
22500-455: Was one of the first stars whose distance was estimated through parallax measurements. Vega has functioned as the baseline for calibrating the photometric brightness scale and was one of the stars used to define the zero point for the UBV photometric system . Vega is only about a tenth of the age of the Sun, but since it is 2.1 times as massive, its expected lifetime is also one tenth of that of
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