Word.ws English Dictionary

sun shot

sun shot noun: a measurement of the angle of the sun, made using a sextant, usually at noon.

Noun

sun shot (plural sun shots)

  1. A measurement of the angle of the sun, made using a sextant, usually at noon.
    • Not so long ago, most surveyors thought that sun shots and star shots were more trouble than they were worth.1987, American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, ACSM technical papers, page 167
    • I first learned to navigate by using hand-held sextants to take sun shots, star shots, or by looking out the window reading a map.2014, Cecil G. Foster, MiG Alley to Mu Ghia Pass: Memoirs of a Korean War Ace, page 144
  2. A photograph that includes the sun.
    • When hunting for subject matter for your sun shots, investigate the picture possibilities you previously passed up as being run-of-the-mill scenes.1949 December, Ray Atkeson, “Get the Sun In Your Pictures”, in Popular Photography, volume 25, number 6, page 159
    • I then salvaged both by sandwiching them with sun shots made with a 400mm lens.1981, Petersen's Photographic Magazine - Volume 10, Issues 1-6, page 122

Examples of sun shot in a sentence

  • Al can't take sun shots in the fog to check their location, so David adjusts the propellers to climbing pitch and opens the throttles to maximum boost, easing the control column back.2014, Cynthia J. Faryon, Incredible Tales of the Royal Canadian Air Force, page 26:
  • So we had these three different types of sun shots; and each required its own discipline and technique."2007, Cinefex - Issues 108-111, page 29:

Forms of sun shot

pluralsun shots
alternative formsun-shot

Questions about sun shot

What does sun shot mean?
Sun shot means a measurement of the angle of the sun, made using a sextant, usually at noon.
How do you use sun shot in a sentence?
Al can't take sun shots in the fog to check their location, so David adjusts the propellers to climbing pitch and opens the throttles to maximum boost, easing the control column back.
What part of speech is sun shot?
Sun shot is a noun.
What is the plural of sun shot?
The plural of sun shot is sun shots.

Words near sun shot in the dictionary

  1. sun protection factor
  2. sun protection factors
  3. sun room
  4. sun rooms
  5. Sun Salutation
  6. sun shot
  7. sun shots
  8. sun shower
  9. sun showers
  10. sun sign
  11. sun signs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sun shot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “sun shot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sun_shot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.