AS102 Final: In the next module we continue to study more about stars in general as we learn about the importance of the H
Document Summary
In the next module we continue to study more about stars in general as we learn about the importance of the h-r diagram, and something about stars" life cycles. The distances to stars are important measurements and astronomers have developed many different ways to determine stellar distances. We start here with the simplest and earliest method and, as this course unfolds, more methods will become evident. We describe here a method which uses some basic trigonometry, although we won"t actually do any calculations. You probably remember from high school math that finding the distance to a tree on the other side of a river, the example used in your textbook, is fairly straightforward. Measuring the distance to a nearby star is really no different. The only difference is that the baseline of the triangle turns out to be the diameter of the earth"s orbit around the sun.
