How Do We Measure the Distance to Stars?

The answer lies in the tiny shifts we see in a star's position as Earth revolves around the sun.

[AshleyRiot]

Is such a shame that this channel has been completely abandoned. You could just keep it going with questions asked to experts and give also young astrophysicists some visibility in this way.
It was one of the best channels out there on YT.

[kindacute]

Im regretting hating math when I was on high school, little did I know that I would love cosmic stuffs and studies so much that it required math to solve almost everything about universe. Now Im trying to learn math again on youtube alone with watching space videos so that I can understand everything.

[zayinthedesert]

So simple yet so complex on how this is calculated, I never grew up as a math wiz but once college forced me thru calculus and all that jazz, I fell in love with it!

[nicholasb]

There are still many assumptions that they gloss over.
1. How do we know the radius of the orbit?
2. How do we know what days to make the observations
3. How do we account for the movement of Sol and the star being measured?
I would like to see a video describe the initial observations and then how the formulas are derived.

[iampeachy]

Just a triangle, one most tough measurements uses such simple answer
I have never been shocked more than this

[cbbhvjc]

Great explanation, wonderful animation! Well done!
This is how a young person can begin to see the power in math.

[nareshbambhroliya]

Loved to hear that you are an Indian origin
INDIAN ROOT 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

[bullrancher]

Ok do i need the sides of the triangle to calculate

[jwing]

I noticed that they did not mention that the max distance utilizing this parallax angle method in Earth's atmosphere is 0.01 arcsec making the max distance we can measure only 100 parsecs which is 326 light years and .001 arcsec outside earth's atmosphere for a max distance of 1000 parsecs which is 3261 light years. This means any distance given that is more than 3261 light years is only a wild guess. So how do we know the furthest star is 5 billion light years away? We don't we guess based on its luminency, which requires us to assume all stars are the same size and brightness which they definitely aren't.

[babu_moshai]

That's a very well explained the topic thanks for this video
Please make more video like this

[PrinceInShadow]

Parallax might works if the object is stationary...but if everything is moving at different speedss than its no longer accurate??

[meditationrelaxationmusic]

I subscribe to your channel it is so good✨✨ and, to be honest, you deserve more

[Alex-kphr]

Knowing the star's distance from earth is one thing, but since the universe is expanding at the rate of 70k/s this distance keeps changing every second. And, the parallax feature could have happened many times before the light reached earth, either in the up/down direction or left/right direction depending on the gravitational bending of light as it passed a star. So if you wanted to travel to that distant star A, you would have to make course corrections each time you passed a star in line with that star A line of sight meaning that the distance from earth to star A is longer than the measured distance.

[MrGazzii]

But there is one more factor need to take note. The Size of the star.
If the size of the distance star is big, it will look move less. if the size of the near star is small, it will still seem move more. How accurate it can be?

[babyshark]

Is your assumtion the distance of the star to 2 observed position on Earth the same? Because if not, we can not calculate the distance from Earth to star. We can not calculate the triangle edges just knowing 1 edge (Earth to Sun) and 3 corners

[SynTheoria]

How do we know what the distance of the base of Earth’s orbit is? That needs to be explained to begin with, but it just gets brushed aside as if it were a given.

[johnstopford]

I've never seen any Stars Shift and I've been looking at them every night for 50 years. All the constellations have remain fixed since that time. The only thing is the earth moves around our sun and rotation. If this theory is true all the stars would be shifting from there fixed positions.
Also in the past earth was the centre of everything and the stars orbited around earth. Were not going backwards again in our thinking are we ?
QUESTION EVERYTHING just don't go along with the narrative because its the easy road.

[AdamPoniatowski]

but wouldn't it make measurements inaccurate? as we measure it in 6 month intervals. As most of us know, stars are not stationary objections in space. Do you guys/gals factor the direction the star is heading and the velocity it is traveling as well?
*correction from speed to velocity. To some, semantics can be important

[jessicawelton]

I don't quite understand this because if we measure from one point on earth, then that same point, when we are on the exact opposite side of the orbit in a cosmic scale we moved less than 2 centimeters away from where we started. How would that give a accurate reading of the star's distance. I mean when we scale things on earth it's to earth's scale. But we can't calculate on a cosmic scale. Not to mention. We can't count on light speed to be accurate as light can be effected by gravity in space. And if we can't count on that as a absolute... then how can we accurately measure stars. Or am I missing something. I genuinely want to know.

[wonderkris]

But isn’t the sun and the star itself moving away from each other between the two measurements ? Is this considered too short a time frame that the distance moved is a rounding error?