Is it true or false astronomers have calculated the parallax angles of millions of stars?

Answer 1

The answer is: yes, just about, maybe.

Astronomers had catalogued over 2 million stars with parallax values.

However many of the values are estimates and some of the angles are very small.

Answer 2

True, astronomers have calculated the parallax angles of millions of stars by observing their apparent shift in position as Earth orbits the Sun. This allows astronomers to determine the distance to those stars using trigonometry.

Answer 3

Imagine this:

There's a tree on the other side of the river. You'd like to know how far it is from you,

but there's no way to stretch a measuring tape across the river. What do you do ?

Try this:

-- Mark two points on the ground, 100 feet apart, both on the same side of the river,

where you are. Call them points 'A' and 'B'.

-- Stand at Point-'A'. Measure the angle between Point-"B" and the distant tree.

Write it down, then walk along your side of the river, over to Point-'B'.

-- Stand at Point-'B'. Measure the angle between Point-'A' and the distant tree.

Write it down.

-- You have a triangle, formed by the tree, Point-'A', and Point-'B'. You know the

length of Side-AB, and you know the angles from each end of it to the tree.

With only a little bit of trigonometry, you can calculate the distance to the tree.

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Now, over to "parallax".

-- The distant star is the tree. You can;t stretch a measuring tape to it from Earth.

So you use two points that you can reach, and measure the angles from each point.

-- The two points are the places where the Earth is, on opposite sides of its orbit

around the sun, 6 months apart.

The distance between the points is roughly 186 million miles.

When we go from one point to the other, the angle toward the star changes slightly.

The amount that direction changes in 6 months is that star's parallax.

If we measure the direction toward the star from each point, we can calculate

the distance to the star.

Answer 4

No, only up to about 1600 light-years or so. Beyond that, the parallax angle becomes too small to measure with any reasonable degree of precision. This is with current technology; we can easily imagine that in the future, with improved technology, this range can be extended.

Answer 5

No, the parallax would be too small to measure. With current technology, a parallax can be used up to a distance of about 1600 light-years - the farther away the start that is measured, the more inaccurate is the distance calculation.

Answer 6

No it only works out to a certain distance.

Beyond this you move in to the field of red shifting measurement.

Answer 7

describe the parallax method of determining distance to stars

Answer 8

True, just about.

They have done it for about 2.5 million stars.

Answer 9

No.