Timeline for When was the distance to a star measured for the first time without using parallax?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 13, 2020 at 13:00 | comment | added | ProfRob | I take issue with your comment that all distances are ultimately based on parallax. The astronomical unit is now based on radar distance measurements, not the parallax of Venus. Indeed many stars are very different to the Sun, which is why earlier estimates of the distances to stars were often erroneous. That does not mean that they were not estimated and Steve Linton provides an example. | |
| Nov 13, 2020 at 12:00 | comment | added | dieki | Also, stars vary by a factor of over 100,000,000 in brightness, so this doesn't help you tell a distant bright star from a close dim star. And until we knew how far away the stars were, we had no reason to assume they were the same brightness as the sun. | |
| Nov 13, 2020 at 11:57 | comment | added | dieki | We learned the distance to the sun by observing a transit of Venus from two different points on earth - so it all comes back to parallax. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… | |
| Nov 13, 2020 at 8:38 | vote | accept | usernumber | ||
| Nov 13, 2020 at 7:39 | comment | added | ProfRob | We know the distance to the Sun and it's luminosity, independently of parallax. The distance to any star could be estimated by assuming it was similar to the Sun. | |
| Nov 13, 2020 at 3:30 | review | First posts | |||
| Nov 13, 2020 at 8:39 | |||||
| Nov 13, 2020 at 3:28 | history | answered | dieki | CC BY-SA 4.0 |