Heliostat

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A device that includes a plane mirror which turns so as to keep reflecting sunlight toward a predetermined target, compensating for the sun's apparent motions in the sky. The target may be a physical object, distant from the heliostat, or a direction in space, and is almost always stationary relative to the heliostat, so the light is reflected in a fixed direction.

    "Each heliostat can be directed to bathe a particular park bench or tree in a beam of light. […] The three heliostats cost $355,000 together, not apiece."

Synonyms

All synonyms
observatoryplanetariumreflectorrefractorspectrographspectroscope

Example

More examples

"Each heliostat can be directed to bathe a particular park bench or tree in a beam of light. […] The three heliostats cost $355,000 together, not apiece."

Etymology

Circa 1750, from New Latin heliostata, from Ancient Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios, “sun”) + Latin status (“stationary”). By surface analysis, helio- + -stat.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.