the.com/stellar
a word so good at praise it borrowed a star's entire reputation
means Excellent or outstanding — so good it deserves comparison to the stars; literally, of or relating to stars.
from From Latin stellaris, 'pertaining to a star,' built on stella, 'star.' That stella is an old, far-reaching root — a likely cousin of the Greek aster (which gives us asterisk and astronomy) and even of English star itself, all possibly tracing back to a shared ancestor in the prehistoric parent tongue. The figurative leap from 'astronomical' to 'fantastic' is fairly modern: people simply found that pointing at the heavens was the highest praise available.
- origin
- from Latin stella, meaning star
- stellar wind
- stars constantly bleed plasma into space
- stellar nursery
- gas clouds where new stars are born
- color code
- a star's color reveals its temperature
- stellar parallax
- tiny star shifts measure cosmic distances
sirius a and b — binary star system 8.6 light-years away, brightest star in earth's night sky
betelgeuse — red supergiant in orion, 640 light-years away, expected to supernova within 100,000 years
proxima centauri — closest star to the sun at 4.24 light-years, red dwarf discovered 1915