The standard of correction in the equation of time used in Ptolemaic astronomy was based upon the assumption that the sidereal day the period of time it takes a fixed star to return to zenith is constant, because the celestial sphere on which the fixed stars are located should not be assumed to speed up and slow down.
Jefferson, along with Washington and Lincoln, is a fixed star in the American firmament.
His presence as a fixed star in cultural politics is as little wobbled by death as it was, while he lived, by points of view uncongenial to his own.
It seems now to be a fixed star in the constellation of London arts, perhaps the brightest, and the subject of admiring comment wherever I go in Europe or America.
Following John F. Kennedy's death, in 1963, she retreats to Hyannis Port not merely to recuperate but to set in motion the process whereby the image of her husband will become a fixed star in the public gaze.
Morality has long been treated as if it were a fixed star, sitting there far removed from the earthly concerns of real people, meant to guide them to the true and the beautiful.
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation," Justice Robert H. Jackson memorably said for the court, "it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion".
Chief Justice Roberts, quoting from a 1943 opinion barring the government from requiring public schoolchildren to salute the flag, noted: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion".
As to that, we cannot improve upon what Justice Jackson wrote for the Court 70 years ago: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein".
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
Jackson wrote: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein".
