• Key Information

  • Measuring Distances

  • Type
    Measurements
  • Units of Measurement
    Astronomical Unit; Light Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days and Years; Parsecs; Kiloparsecs
  • Methods of Measurement
    Radar ranging, Parallax, Cepheid Variables, Tully-Fisher relation (TFR), Reshift, Type 1s Supernovae
  • Learning Point
  • Measuring distances in space is critical to understand the relationship of things to each other, and requires units of measurement, as well as methods to measure those units. Various techniques are used to help us understand the vast scale of the universe.
  • Project
  • Find some common scales of measurement in space.
  • Media
  • Location
  • Located in
    Earth, orbiting the Sun
  • Fun Facts
  • Astronomical Units, or AUs, help us measure distances within our Solar System, and represent the distance of the Earth to the Sun.
  • A light year is the distance light travels in one year. This can be divided into days, hours, minutes and seconds to be even more precise.
  • Parallax is a key way of measuring distances within about 10,000 light years, which is taking two measurements from different positions, and calculating the difference between them.