In the visible universe what is the furthest object visible to us? Was stellar parrallex known in ancient time

Answer 1

Quasars are the farthest visible objects (using telescopes) and they exceed 6 billion light years in distance.

Parallax was definitely known about in ancient times and was used as a method of surveying (and still is.) It was first used in 1838 by Friedrech Bessel to measure the distance to a star successfully, the star was 61 Cygni. For more information on Parallax, read Parallax: The Race to Measure the Stars by Hirshfield

Answer 2

The other answers are excellent, except of course the Egyptian aristocrats who designed the pyramids had no idea about the kinematics of the Milky Way.

Just a few additional points:

The cosmic microwave background, at 13.7 billion lightyears distant, is the furthest thing that can possibly be detected by photons, because beyond it the universe is opaque to photons. The cosmic microwave background can only be seen with radio telescopes (although if you tune a satellite TV system between channels, some of the video noise and hiss, maybe as much as 10%, is coming from the cosmic microwave background). Things further than the cosmic microwave background could in principle be detected by neutrino or gravity-wave telescopes, but this hasn't been done yet.

The furthest object visible to the naked eye really depends on how good your eyes are. Most galaxies in the Messier catalog (M31, M81, M82, M51, M101, etc.) can be seen with the naked eye if you have dark skies and know where to look. Some galaxies in the NGC catalog can be seen with the naked eye.

My guess for the record naked-eye object is M87 in the Virgo Cluster, which is about 50 million lightyears away.

Answer 3

We can't see what is farthest away in the visible light spectrum. Radio telescopes detect background radiation that is calculated to be 3 degrees above absolute zero kelvin. This is what some think is the outer boundary of this universe, which they also think is expanding. The earth is in a solar system on one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy. We have not counted all of the stars in this galaxy, because we can't even see them all from our position, but there are billions. Most are expected to have planets around them, but we haven't actually identified any planets outside our solar syatem yet, because we can't see that far. There are at least as many galazies in this universe as there are stars in our galaxy. We don't really know how many (billions or trillions) or what's in them, but they each have billions of stars in them too. There are more stars like the sun than there are cells in your body.
Whoever built the pyramids on the Giza plateau in Egypt knew the time it takes for the Milky Way galaxy to rotate once. The Babylonians before them knew that we were on a planet that went around the sun, and they kept track of the movements of the other planets in our solar system. So yes, the "ancients" knew a lot of things we didn't know until we got into space. Whatever they knew we lost for awhile because the self-proclaimed greatest nations in the world thought the world was flat for eons after the pyramids were built.

Answer 4

The most distant thing we can observe is the cosmic microwave background, at around 13.7 billion light years. The most distant object detected is a galaxy estimated at 14.88 billion light years. Naked eye, you can see the Andromeda galaxy (M31) at around 2.5 million light years, and in a really dark sky, M33 at about 3 million LY.

The ancient Greeks were aware of the concept of parallax, and in fact used the lack of apparent stellar parallax as an argument against a heliocentric universe. The first measurement of stellar parallax didn't happen until the early nineteenth century.

Answer 5

it rather is easy wisdom that the universe is increasing, as something is shifting farther away, that's going to nonetheless have been emitting easy whilst it became plenty closer, permitting us to work out it even nonetheless we are seeing it the place it became, no longer the place it rather is. additionally your question assumes that the cost of sunshine is a continuing, the place it is not. that's been progressively lowering by the years, and lab outcomes be certain that easy would be bogged right down to below a million mile and hour, very almost to a factor of non-action. as properly, it rather is impossible to wisely define distances of extra beneficial than approximately 10,000 easy years; any further than this is notably plenty in basic terms a wager. (the equivalent would be triangulating a think approximately Chicago from 2 factors 6 inches aside in Miami; it rather is amazingly some room for blunders.)