Static properties

Properties require an instance of a type to be created before they can be accessed. Static properties, on the other hand, do not.

A static property is a piece of data; in some cases this includes constant values, associated with class definitions which can be retrieved without creating an object instance.

MSDN shows static properties using an S symbol in the left-most column. For example, the System.Text.Encoding class has a number of static properties denoting different text encoding types, shown in the following screenshot:

PowerShell is also able to list the static properties for a type (or class) using Get-Member with the Static switch:

PS> [System.Text.Encoding] | Get-Member -MemberType Property -Static
TypeName: System.Text.Encoding
Name             MemberType Definition
----             ---------- ----------
ASCII            Property   static System.Text.Encoding ASCII {get;}
BigEndianUnicode Property   static System.Text.Encoding BigEndianUnicode {get;}
Default ...