Re: Help with Astronomical Notation needed

On Sep 21, 11:29 pm, nos...@xxxxxxxxxx (Paul Ciszek) wrote:

How can he use these
numbers to get the distance of Epsilon Indi in 50,000 years?

I think this is trickier than has yet been mentioned. Isn't this about
half a galactic rotation period? No linear extrapolation of the
current peculiar motion of the star is going to give an accurate
result over that time scale. Depending on the star's orbit, it could
"reverse course" and be actually closer by then, even though it's
heading away right now.

I think you need to solve for the galactic orbits of both the sun and
the star in question. I'm not certain we have enough data to do that.

Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"Maybe the reason we don't see a bunch of dyson spheres out there in
the sky is [that] the tiny amount of energy wasted by letting stars
vent fusion energy into deep space isn't worth messing with."
-- Isaac Kuo

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