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How would you use the parallax formula to determine the distances to a star (in parsecs)? The parallax angle is 0.0012516.

Answer 1

Hunter Arthur

799

The unit of the angle must be the second ('').

One parsec is the distance for a parallax angle of one.

The distance is equal to 1/(angle in seconds) for all other values in seconds.

parsecs. For a few significant digits (sd), these are approximations.

only.

This distance is approximately 1 /.0012516 = 798.98 parsecs.

If the angle's unit had been a degree,

The distance, which is 0222 parsec, is too tiny to be the distance.

a star's.

Proxima Centauri, the closest star, is located 1.293 parsecs away.

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Answer 2

Ian Aitchison

The parallax formula can be used to calculate the distance to a star in parsecs. ( \text{Distance (parsecs)} = \frac{1}{\text{Parallax angle (arcseconds)}} ) For example, if the parallax angle is 0.0012516 arcseconds, the distance to the star would be roughly ( \frac{1}{0.0012516} ) parsecs, or 798.53 parsecs.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.