Monday, February 13, 2012

Why is the uncertainty associated with a star's distance greater for stars that are farther from Earth?

The distances of nearby stars are measured using their parallaxes.. Why is the uncertainty associated with a star's distance greater for stars that are farther from Earth? Hint: Astronomers have a limited precision for measuring parallax angles for stars of about 1/1000th of an arcsecond.Why is the uncertainty associated with a star's distance greater for stars that are farther from Earth?The parallax technique used to measure stellar distances is partially based on how far a star moves within a given period of time. Because stars are far away, that movement is hard to measure, and the farther away a star is the more difficult it becomes to detect and accurately measure how far it moves within a period of time.Why is the uncertainty associated with a star's distance greater for stars that are farther from Earth?If the measurement uncertainty is +/- 0.001 arcsec then the uncertainty in the distance for an object at:

1 parsec (parallax 1.0 arcsec) is 0.1%

10 parsecs (parallax 0.1 arcsec) is 1%

100 parsecs (parallax 0.01 arcsec) is 10%

and 1000 parsecs (parallax 0.001 arcsec) is 100%Why is the uncertainty associated with a star's distance greater for stars that are farther from Earth?The further a star is, the smaller the parallax measured for it. And, as you wrote, astronomers have a limited precision for measuring parallax angles for stars of about 1/1000th of an arcsecond... or less.

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