a system of one or more stars, often with accompanying planets
A generalization of the usual meaning, referring to our own planetary system, which OED records from 1704 (in an unrevised entry).
Then upwards yet your ravish’d eyes convey, / And view the skies with sparkling di’monds gay: / See num’rous solar systems scatter’d round, / To make your admiration more profound. ]
A very grand scheme was in contemplation, under White’s redoubtable leadership—no less than a public excursion to the nebula in Argo, in order to survey, from some near but sufficiently safe position, the marvellously stupendous movements that are of late developing there, in the gradual process of evolving a huge solar system.
Granting human electricity to exist, why should not a communication be established, like a sort of spiritual Atlantic cable, between man and the beings of other spheres and other solar systems?
He had piloted the Adastra to its first contact with the civilization of another solar system.
Must be a piece of some unknown planet, that maybe belonged to some unknown solar system, way out among the stars.
Admittedly, he was used to interplanetary rather than interstellar flight; but it is almost as easy to get lost inside solar systems as between them.
Slade left the Copernicus with fuel for at most seven light-years. It’s fifty to the nearest inhabited solar system.
Gorgias touched the map retrieval plate and the screen lit up, revealing a solar system of twelve planets.
‘We’re the first human beings to reach another solar system,’ Lena said with awe.
The Werel-Yeowe solar system consists of 16 planets orbiting a yellow-white star (RK-tamo-5544-34).
Their ships cruised at sublight speeds through distant solar systems.
I do not exist to save humans, I exist to save humanity. Your cruelties and mistakes may look damning to you, but that is not what I see. Every human conversation is more elegant and complex than the entire solar system that contains it.
antedating 1882
"Nunsowe Green", A Thousand Years Hence
(The OED definition refers only to our own solar system.)
Last modified 2022-01-22 14:46:35
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