heliostat
English
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Heliostat.jpg/220px-Heliostat.jpg)
Etymology
Circa 1750, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] New Latin heliostata, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Ancient Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios, “sun”) + (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin status (“stationary”).
Noun
heliostat (plural heliostats)
- 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.
Translations
device to continuously reflect sunlight toward a predetermined target, almost always in some fixed direction, despite the sun's motions in the sky
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