STAR, in Astronomy, a general name for all the heavenly bodies, which, like so many brilliant studs, are dispersed throughout the whole heavens. The stars are distinguished, from the phenomena of their motion, &c., into fixed, and erratic or wandering stars. These last are again distinguished into the greater luminaries, viz. the sun and moon; the planets, or wandering stars, properly so called, and the comets; which have been all fully considered and explained under the article Αsτrονομυ. As to the fixed stars, they are so called, because they seem to be fixed, or perfectly at rest, and consequently appear always at the same distance from each other.

Palling Stars , in Meteorology, fiery meteors which dart through the sky in the form of a star.

Star , in Fortification, denotes a small fort, having five or more points, or salient and reentering angles, flanking one another, and their faces ninety or a hundred feet long.

Star-Chamber , Court of, (Camera Stellata), a famous, or rather infamous, English tribunal, said to have been so called either from a Saxon word signifying to steer or govern; or from its punishing the crimen stellionatus, or cosenage; or because the room in which it sat, the old coun cil-chamber of the palace of Westminster, was full of win dows; or, (to which Sir Edward Coke, 4 Inst. 66. accedes), because haply the roof thereof was at the first garnished with gilded stars. This was a court of very ancient original; but newmodelled by statutes 3 Henry VII. c. 1, and 21 Henry VIII. c. 20, consisting of divers lords spiritual and temporal, being privy-councillors, together with two judges of the courts of common law, without the intervention of any jury. Their jurisdiction extended legally over riots, perjury, misbehaviour of sheriffs, and other notorious misdemeanours, contrary to the laws of the land. Yet this was afterwards, as Lord Clarendon informs us, stretched “to the asserting of all proclamations and orders of state; to the vindicating of illegal commissions and grants of monopolies; holding for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited; and becoming both a court of law to determine civil rights, and a court of revenue to en rich the treasury: the council-table by proclamations en joining to the people that which was not enjoined by the laws, and prohibiting that which was not prohibited; and the star-chamber, which consisted of the same persons in different rooms, censuring the breach and disobedience to those proclamations by very great fines, imprisonments, and corporal severities: so that any disrespect to any acts of state, or to the persons of statesmen, was in no time more penal, and the foundations of right never more in danger to be destroyed.” For these reasons, it was finally abolished by statute 16 Car. I. c. 10, to the general joy of the whole nation.

Star-Board , the right side of the ship when the eye of the spectator is directed forward.

SτARshot, a gelatinous substance frequently found in fields, and supposed by the vulgar to have been produced from the meteor called a falling-star; but, in reality, it is the half-digested food of herons, seamews, and the like birds; for these birds have been found, when newly shot, to disgorge a substance of the same kind.