• Question: How can you measure the distance to a star?

    Asked by kapayaewh to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: David Corne

      David Corne answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      You have to be more specific. Lady GaGa is probably in Los Angeles at the moment, which is 5457 miles from London – meanwhile Rafael Nadal is probably in Madrid right now, which is just over 1,000 miles from where I am in Edinburgh. I use this site to figure these things out: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distance.html

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Ha,ha, I like David’s answer to this one

    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I don’t think there’s an easy method. One method that astronomer’s use involves looking at other objects in the sky that you know the distances between and using various equations to work out the distance to the star in question. It can also be done by looking at how bright it is which gives an indication to how far away it is.

    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      One way of estimating this might be to look how quickly it moves – if something is really far away, it will appear to move more slowly than something closer to us. We can also look at how bright it is.

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