Re: Re: Re: Re: Hawking and distance of stars

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:17:39 GMT, "Martin Hutton"
<mdhutton1949NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxx> enriched this group when s/he wrote:

>> Now if McDumbo has two brain cells to think with, he should realize
>> that measuring the distance to stars is really not that hard. He can
>> even do it himself, a small telescope with a camera mount is all that
>> is needed. Take two photos, six months apart, that include a know
>> nearby star and he will SEE for HIMSELF the parallax.
>
>Two brain cells? That's pushing it donchya think?
>
>I believe getting good parallex measurements is a
>wee bit harder than two quick snapshots.

Actually, no it isn't. There are several which show up on even fairly
small photos, you just have to have a couple of reasonable bright
stars far enough away to give no parallax, and then measure the
relative position of the star which is close enough to show parallax.
It would of course be much harder to measure the real parallax without
havine some form of scale on the picture, but it would be quite easy
to actually see one star had changed position between the two photos.

--
Bob.

.

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