C:

Cadent: said of the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth houses. These houses immediately precede the four angles in a chart, and planets in them are subtler in their expression than in angular houses. Planets in cadent houses are often indicative of mental energy, act in the background, and have an effect on one’s thinking.

Cardinal: those signs beginning each season, Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn. This quadruplicity denotes force manifesting in matter, activity, creativity, crisis, directness, speed and assertion. Planets in different Cardinal signs are often square or opposed, and thus inharmoniously related.

Catadioptric: from the Greek "cata:" through, against or backward, and "diopter:" "of optical lenses." Catadioptric telescopes use lenses and mirrors in their design, and are a mixture of reflector and refractor elements. Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutov telescopes fall into this category.

CCD (charge-coupled device): Telescopes intensify images falling on them by focusing the image with a collecting lens or mirror. By virtue of its enhanced brightness, the focused image can then be magnified many times. Although in principle it can be magnified as many times as it has been brightened, telescope images are usually brightened millions to billions of times but magnified only a few hundred times. This is due to the limiting effect of atmospheric turbulence, and because the need to be make the object brighter far exceeds the need to make it larger. This subsequent magnification can be carried out by a variety of eyepieces or objective lenses placed in the various focal planes (places where the light comes to focus) of the telescope.

Celestial Sphere: an imaginary sphere of the heavens on the surface of which all celestial bodies appear to be located; once thought by the ancients to be an actual, crystalline physical sphere.

Cerberus: a three-headed dog with a snake’s tail and snakeheads protruding from his back, one of the offspring of Typhoeus and Echidna, guarding the only gate into hell. Orpheus was one of the few living mortals to get past Cerberus by charming it to sleep with song during his attempt to rescue Eurydice from death. Hercules’ last labor was bringing Cerberus from the underworld and showing him to King Eurystheus.

Charge-coupled device:  See "CCD above."

Chart: a diagram or picture centered around a circle representing the local sky at a particular time and place that astrologers then interpret. The circle is divided into 12 parts in two independent ways: one called the signs, the other the houses. The planets are interpreted by the house they fall in, the sign they occupy, their angular relationships to each other, and their pattern as a whole.

Chiron: a solar system object with the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid. Chiron is strange because it has a coma - a cloud of watery gases given off by its nucleus characteristic of comets – but is almost 100 miles in diameter, much larger by four orders of magnitude than comets normally are. It was first thought to be a large asteroid because of its size. Its very elliptical orbit that extends from just inside Saturn’s orbit to about that of Uranus’ is also unstable over a period of millions of years. In astronomical terms this tells us that it hasn’t been there very long. The fact that Chiron’s coma is still active supports this hypothesis, for the super-volatiles emitted by its surface and nucleus would have completely dissipated in a few million years given its current location. For more on Chiron, asteroid or comet?, click here. For more on the astrology of Chiron, the wounded healer, click here.

COBE: Developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and launched in 1989, The COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite's mission was to measure the background infrared and microwave radiation seen everywhere in the sky and thought to be left over from the early universe after the Big Bang. COBE was comprised of three components: a Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) to compare the cosmic microwave background radiation spectrum with an ideal absorber and emitter of radiation, a Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) to create a map of the cosmic radiation, and, to search for the cosmic infrared background radiation, a Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE).

Comet: a small, fragile, irregularly shaped body composed of ices (water and frozen gases) and dust that was not incorporated into a planet when the solar system was formed. Comets have highly elliptical orbits bringing them very close to the Sun and deep into space, often well beyond the Pluto’s orbit. Only visible near the Sun, comets are thought to reside in the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud. Most of a comet’s ice and gas is dissipated after a few hundred passes near the Sun. The remaining rocky object appears to be so like an asteroid that as many as half of the near-Earth asteroids may be "dead" comets.

Conjunct: said of two planets (or a planet and an angle) that are less than 10° or 12° apart; denotes power or intensity.

Conjunction: the state of being conjunct.

Constellation: any group of stars in a pattern thought to resemble a deity or object after which it was named. The Sun, Moon and planets all appear to move through only 12 constellations (the zodiac) due to their all lying in the ecliptic plane.

Contraparallel: the aspect between two planets that are the same angular distance north and south of the celestial equator (the Earth’s equator projected onto the celestial sphere) and on opposite sides of it; orb 1°. Two planets with opposite "declinations" are said to be in contraparallel; see "declination" and "parallel." This aspect is said to act like the conjunction when two planets have the same declination and are on the same side of the celestial equator (in parallel), and like the opposition when two planets have the same declination and are on opposite sides of the celestial equator (in contraparallel).

Cosmic Cross: see "Grand Cross."

Culminate: a celestial object is said to "culminate" when it crosses the local meridian. It is not at the zenith when it culminates unless that part of the ecliptic also happens to be at the zenith.

Cusp: the beginning or clockwise border of a house or sign. The cusp of a house or a sign is thought to be its strongest area.