Related papers: Parallax in the park
Parallax is the most important astronomical method for determining the distances from the Earth to nearby stars. We present two hands-on activities that explore the concepts and practice of parallax measurement. The first activity is a…
Parallax measurements allow distances to celestial objects to be determined. Coupled with measurement of their position on the celestial sphere, it gives a full three-dimensional picture of the location of the objects relative to the…
We measured the parallax of the James Webb Space Telescope based on near simultaneous observations using the Lulin One-meter Telescope and the GROWTH India Telescope, separated at a distance of ~4214 km. This serves a great demonstration…
Parallax measurements of pulsars allow for accurate measurements of the interstellar electron density and contribute to accurate tests of general relativity using binary systems. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be an ideal instrument…
We show that distances of objects at cosmological distances can be measured directly using interferometry. Our approach to interferometric parallax comes from analysis of 4-point amplitude and intensity correlations that can be generated…
Distances to stars are key to revealing a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way, yet their determination is a major challenge in astronomy. Whilst the brightest nearby stars benefit from direct parallax measurements, fainter stars are…
Observing artificial satellites is a relatively new and unique branch of astronomy that is very interesting and dynamic. One specific aspect of observing these objects is that although they appear amongst the celestial background, as…
The standard cosmological parallax--distance formula, as found in the literature, including text-books and reference books on cosmology, requires a correction. This correction stems from the fact that in the standard text-book derivation it…
Astrometric surveys such as Gaia and LSST will measure parallaxes for hundreds of millions of stars. Yet they will not measure a single distance. Rather, a distance must be estimated from a parallax. In this didactic article, I show that…
Accurate distances to pulsars can be used for a variety of studies of the Galaxy and its electron content. However, most distance measures to pulsars have been derived from the absorption (or lack thereof) of pulsar emission by Galactic HI…
A small tabletop experiment for a direct measurement of the speed of light to an accuracy of few percent is described. The experiment is accessible to a wide spectrum of undergraduate students, in particular to students not majoring in…
The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will drift away from the Earth at about 0.1 AU/yr. Microlensing events will therefore have different characteristics as seen from the satellite and the Earth. From the difference, it is possible…
We propose an experiment using a conventional optical telescope to determine whether aberration of starlight results from special relativistic effects external to a measurement sensor or from optical effects within a sensor. The proposed…
The Gaia satellite will soon probe parallax on cosmological distances. Using the covariant formalism and considering the angle between a pair of sources, we find parallax for both spacelike and timelike separation between observation…
Astronomers measure cosmic distances to objects beyond our own galaxy using standard candles: objects of known intrinsic brightness, whose apparent brightnesses in the sky are then taken as an indication of their distances from the…
I used the 2.4 m Hiltner telescope at MDM Observatory in an attempt to measure trigonometric parallaxes for 14 cataclysmic variable stars. Techniques are described in detail. In the best cases the parallax uncertainties are below 1 mas, and…
The parallax effect in ground-based microlensing (ML) observations consists of a distortion to the standard ML light curve arising from the Earth's orbital motion. In most cases, the resolution in current ML surveys is not accurate enough…
We present the first detection of parallax effects in a gravitational microlensing event. Parallax in a gravitational microlensing event observed only from the Earth appears as a distortion of the lightcurve due to the motion of the Earth…
We describe a novel method to determine direct geometrical distances to quasars that can measure the cosmological constant, Lambda, with minimal assumptions. This method is equivalent to geometric parallax, with the `standard length' being…
The null findings of the terrestrially conducted Michelson-Morley type experiments have been influential to determining which physical theory best fits reality. Here, we propose the use of parallax and ranging techniques of distance…