Parallax Case

Astronomers use parallax to determine the distance of stars from Earth. The distance to stars relatively near to the Earth can be measured using parallax. Parallax uses the different displacements in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different positions to measure the actual distance of the object. Using photographs, we took two different pictures from different lines of views, about 2 meters apart. Once the photographs were printed, we measured the apparent separation among the pictures, and using that measurement we were able to calculate the angular shift. We observed that the apparent shift was about 1.4 cm from the first picture to the second picture. Using this shift, we calculated the angular shift by using the formula (1/p = d). With an angular shift of about 4.125 degrees, or .072 radians, we were able to calculate the distance by using the formula (d = baseline/angular shift), (d = 2m/.072 radians), which gave us a distance of about 27.77 meters. Our calculation was quite a bit off from our approximate distance from the camera, but there are many sources of error that could have come about. Sources of error include not accurately measuring the apparent shift, which would cause for significant deviation among the distance, as well as not being exact as to the baseline and the approximate distance away from the camera.

Then using Stellarium and various stars, we used the parallax of that start to calculate the distance in both parsecs and light years using the formula that the distance is equal to 1/parallax, then converting parsecs to light years, as 1 pc = 3.26 light years. The study of parallax and the apparent distance of stars with respect to the Earth is a very important as to determine the distance of various objects in space, but it does create a lot of deviation as it is not a completely accurate way to calculate the distance of objects that are very far away. As objects are farther away, it becomes more difficult to measure the distance because the angular shift becomes smaller and smaller for objects that are farther away.

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