Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2017

Department

Physics and Astronomy

School

Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Abstract

In most disciplines, finding the distance from one object to the next is, at least in theory, a simple operation. Not so in astronomy. While the size of Earth itself was determined with a fair degree of accuracy in ancient times, the scale of the solar system wasn’t fully understood until just a few centuries ago, and the distances to even the closest of stars wasn’t reliably determined until Friedrich Bessel measured the distance to 61 Cygni in 1838.

Comments

© The Physics Teacher

Publisher's Version

Publication Title

The Physics Teacher

Volume

55

First Page

78

Last Page

79

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