Assignment #3

Measuring Astronomical Distances

Unlike other assignments, please write your answers in the spaces provided Determining the distances to stars and galaxies is one of the most vexing problems in astronomy. There are four basic methods that are used to determine distances: radar, parallax, standard rods or candles, and the Hubble Law. Each of these methods is most useful at certain distances. Radar methods are only useful within the Solar System, while the Hubble Law is useful only on the most distant scales (> 40 Mpc). In this exercise, we investigate the use of parallax and standard rods to determine distances.

Parallax
Although we may be able to derive many of a stars properties through the spectrum of the light it emits, in most cases we cannot immediately gure out its luminosity or its distance. Instead, for nearby stars we rely on a method with which you are actually already familiar: parallax. You can see the parallax eect by holding your thumb out at arms length. As you alternate opening and closing each eye, you should be able so see the position of your thumb jump back and forth relative to objects in the background. This is because the centers of your eyes are a few centimeters apart, so that each eye has a slightly dierent point of view. In this lab, you will experiment with using parallaxes to determine distances. You will also use the standard rod method to measure distances to objects that are too far away to have measurable parallaxes.

Procedure
For this lab you will need a meterstick and a partner. It may also be helpful to use some masking tape to mark out intervals of one meter on the oor before beginning this exercise. 1. Take the meter stick and hold it in front of you, horizontally to the oor. Orient the meter stick so that one end touches your nose, and the other end points forward away from your body, like Pinocchio. 2. When your partner is done mocking you, he or she should hold a pencil halfway down the meter stick at the 50 cm mark. 3. Alternately open and close each eye, noting how the pencil moves against specic background objects. You will need to remember how large the parallax shift is, so that later you can compare it to the angular shift with the pencil in a dierent position.

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4. Have your partner move the pencil to half of the original distance (to 25 cm). When you alternate opening and closing each eye, does the pencil appear to move more or less than before? Try to quantify how much more or less (twice as much? half as much? four times as much? etc.), and record your answer in the table below. 5. Now, have your lab partner move the pencil to twice the original distance to you, at the end of the meterstick. When you alternate opening and closing each eye does the pen appear to move more than or less than before? Try to quantify how much more or less (twice as much? half as much? four times as much? etc.) and record your answer in the table below.

Parallax movement @ 50 cm =
Angular Parallax Shift Compared to 50 cm Distance

25 cm

100 cm

Parallax movement @ 25 cm =

Parallax movement @ 100 cm =

6. Based on your results above, parallax is distances to distant objects.

[more/less] eective at measuring

There is a limiting distance beyond which parallax becomes ineective. This occurs when the parallax angle becomes so small that you cannot detect an angular shift from one eye to the other. The angle at which that occurs depends on the resolution of your eye. For people with bad eyesight, this may happen at nearer distances than people with excellent vision. You and your partner can nd your personal limit by taking the pencil farther and farther away from the observer until the parallax becomes undetectable. 7. Have your partner walk away from you holding out the pencil. Your partner should stop every meter or so, so that you can alternately open and close each eye to check the size of the parallax shift. Measure how far away the pencil is when it stops appearing to move relative to even more distant objects, and record your answer in the space provided below For my eyes, parallax becomes ineective beyond meters.

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8. The angular shift produced by parallax depends not just on the distance to the object, but on the distance between the two observations. For your eyes, the distance between the two observations is the separation between your two eyes. Do you think that the angular shift you observed would be larger or smaller if your eyes were further apart? [larger/smaller] It may help you to draw a small diagram below:

9. Test your assumption by having your partner hold out the pencil while you compare the angular shift by rst opening and closing each eye and by then stepping from left to right, keeping one eye closed at both positions.

Parallax Questions
1. Based on your results above, circle which of the following equations you think better describes the relationship between the angular shift parallax of an object and its distance D? [Hint: the relative shift between 25cm and 100cm should give you the best idea of the answer.] The symbol means is proportional to. 1 D 1 D2

parallax

parallax

As you discovered above, the parallax method has its limitations. In your experiment above, there was a maximum distance that produced observable shifts1 . The maximum distance was limited by your eyesight and the separation between your eyes. In astronomical circumstances we can do a bit better. By using telescopes in space rather than telescopes on the ground, we can decrease the minimum angular shift we can measure by a factor of ten, which increases the distance we can use for parallaxes by a factor of ten. We can also use much longer separations between the two observations (i.e. equivalent to observing with one eye and then the other). 2. In astronomy, the longest separation we can have between two observations is the diameter of the Earths orbit around the Sun. To make observations at opposite positions in the Earths orbit (i.e. 180 apart), how much time should we leave between observations?

Note that this doesnt mean that there arent real shifts for objects at larger distance! It only means that your measuring device (i.e. your eyes) are not accurate enough to detect the shift.

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