How do you measure the distance to a star?

Answer 1

It's known as parallax error. If you look at an object with your right eye and line your finger up on it and then close your right eye and open the left the finger will move away from the object.
By taking the angle to a star from two widely spaced places you can use simple trig to work out the distance.

Answer 2

The units are light years (the distance light travels in one year). The way they do it is a little more complicated.

It uses something called the parallax. The way it works is that as Earth moves around the sun, the position of stars in the sky changes slightly. This can be measured, and you can use the proportions of the triangle to measure the distance.

Answer 3

Here is a great website on stars and how you can measure the distance to a star:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/star-distance.html

If, however, you want the unit, it is measured in:

Light Years (ly)

Answer 4

There are quite a few diverse procedures, depending on how some distance away the action picture star or galaxy is. The farther away it incredibly is, the fewer specific the measurements, by way of fact the precision of the concepts for the farther gadgets relies upon on the precision of the concepts for the nearer gadgets. we are able to degree the distances to planets using radar ranging - bounce a radar beam off a planet, degree the time it takes for the beam to return. considering that radar beams holiday the fee of sunshine, we are able to then degree the gap to the planet. no longer quickly this additionally provides us the gap to our nearest action picture star, the sunlight. the closest stars (aside from the sunlight) are measured using stellar parallax - as we orbit the sunlight the interior of sight stars seem to shift returned and forth relative to farther stars. we are able to degree this shift, and that plus understanding the gap to our sunlight provides us the gap to the action picture star. This works out to around 3 hundred easy-years, i think of. nevertheless properly interior of our Galaxy. The concepts for farther stars get somewhat complicated, so i'm going to easily checklist a number of them and you will seem them up in case you have an activity - additionally seek for "distance ladder" - Stellar parallax (as reported above) - Spectroscopic parallax (which has no longer something to do with stellar parallax) - Variable stars (Cepheid variables, RR Lyrae stars) - Novae and supernovae, and different conventional candles - Hubble's regulation there is extra, yet that's all i will think of of off the precise of my head.

Answer 5

Simply you can’t do that you need very expansive equipment to do that. The light year is the unit used to measure the distance which is the distance the light travel in one year =300000000*60*60*24*365.25=9467280000000000 m.

Answer 6

Light Years.
http://www.myfreegamespot.com/

Answer 7

by parallax. there is some difficulty in this because we can't observe the parallax angle to extremely distant stars because it is simply too small. and the red-shift (or blue-shift) only measures the speed of the star radially away (or toward) from earth not it's distance. and also its usually measured in parsecs not light years.

Answer 8

light years

ie

1 light year is the distant light travels in 1 earth year.

but this is just the unit of measure kind of like 1 inch, 1 foot, or 1 light year.

how do they do it is by using parallax error... as stated by wandusa and bob b

Answer 9

I am unsure as to the abilities of astronomers to accurately measure such distances, or whether they just make up a really big number and people take their word for it, being unable to prove otherwise....

Answer 10

Through basic geometry like you learned at school:

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/Parsec.html