phœbe

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The moon or moon-goddess.
2. n. [l. c] A Cuban fish, Haliperca phœbe. F. Poey.
3. n. The water-pewee, or pewit flycatcher, Sayornis fuscus. See cut under pewit.
4. n. [lowercase] A serranoid fish, Prionodes phœbe, of the West Indian fauna.
5. n. The ninth satellite of Saturn, announced and named by Professor W. H. Pickering, in 1899, as having been found on photographic plates made at Arequipa, in the South American branch of the observatory of Harvard University. The discovery remained unconfirmed until 1904, when the satellite was rediscovered upon a large number of more recent Arequipa plates, which furnish data for a complete determination of its orbit. According to Pickering, its distance from the planet is 8,000,000 miles (more than 2½ times as great as that of Iapetus, the most remote of the satellites previously known) and its period 546.5 days. Its motion appears to be retrograde — a most surprising result. It is extremely faint (sixteenth magnitude) and is probably beyond the reach of visual observation with any existing telescope. Its diameter is estimated at 200 miles.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) The pewee, or pewit.