The New Horizons Spacecraft Just Helped Make First Stereoscopic Image Of A Star's Location

Much of astronomy is based around measuring the distances to celestial bodies, and the distances are all rooted in a technique called stellar parallax. This has been used since the 19th century to measure the distances to stars, and all measurements of interstellar and intergalactic distances are based on the measurement of the tiny wobble in a star's apparent position.
The problem is, despite it being a fundamental technique at the core of astronomy, nobody has ever been able to make a simple, obvious demonstration of it, until now.

[theCodyReeder]

Do you think it would be worth sending out two (or more?) space craft out of the solar system in different directions specifically to making parallax measurements?

[fireflyf]

SM: "This is Wolf 359..."
Please make a reference to...
SM: "... and no you can't see any wreckage of Federation starships..."
You never disappoint! :)

[FuncleChuck]

Whoa. This is one of the coolest, most “THE STARS ARE MOVING” things I’ve ever seen.

[jasonpatterson]

An analogy: The ratio of one AU to one light year is very close to the ratio of one inch to one mile (63241:1 vs 63360:1). The normal photos with baseline 2 AU, even looking at the closest stars, are like trying to see the parallax shift of an object about 4 miles (~6 1/2 km) away by closing one eye at a time.

[AttilaAsztalos]

6:15 "...and because the imaging is happening simultaneously..." - *Einstein joined the chat and started typing*

[stevepirie]

So if you sent a message by laser aimed to travel many light years to a human colony you’d have to take the movement into account of the home star and planet you’re firing it to?

[JoakimKanon]

Distances in space always blows my mind, and seeing the small difference in position of the stars from earth and new horizon is so cool. Melts my brain.

[atkelar]

I lost it at the "combined motion" picture at 5:53... no wonder in Dune (IIRC) they had to use drugs for proper space navigation :D

[luketurner]

4:13 I've always wondered where the term "Parsec" came from; thank you Scott Manley for an "ah, that makes sense now" moment

[hogey]

Thanks Simon for following up on this. Love your description and analysis mate. I had a moment the other day on reddit when this simple, boring little vid was on the front page. I watched it for a minute, slowly understanding the significance. The parallax of two eyeballs billions of km apart. And that steady star field with just a small change.

[ricksgamemisc]

Thank you for the Trek reference, because to this non-astronomer, that's the ONLY reason I know the name of that star. :D

[caonabo]

This video is amazing! All done with simplicity, clarity and great explanstion.

Thank you Scott. My younger daughter was amazed and thanks you too!

Godspeed to you.

[Richardincancale]

7:09 It’s held together with coloured string?

[videolabguy]

You rock! That was the coolest thing I've seen so far today!

[TheLeontheking]

So beautiful! Proxima Centauri is so far away, yet the stars around are so much much much farther away that they still occupy the same pixels in those two images :)

[jamesstewart]

In Star Wars the Standard day is based off of Coruscant which just so happens ;) to have extremely similar orbit and rotation period as Earth. Hence where the standard AU almost certainly comes from in that galaxy.

[rimckd]

Now THIS vid really taught me a lot - usually my feeble brain struggles with this space stuff... But now I'm beginning to understand just how messy astronomy really is. Subscribed!

[ggBrUSA]

Thank you so much for the high quality content once again.

[chrissartain]

Scott, your work gets better every Video! Keep it up!!

[NotCubes]

4:23 I don't think that the standard orbit matters that much, given that apparently nobody in the star wars universe knows what a parsec actually is