What is the impact of astrophysics on society?.
Parallax, resolution, Airy disc, parsecs, distances What are the the trigonometric parallax limits for space-based and ground-based methods of measurement? Parallax refers to the different views that you see from two different positions. Try this experiment. Hold the index finger of your left hand vertical, 20 cm in front of you. Hold the index finger of your right hand vertical, 40 cm in front of you. Now close your left eye and, using just your right eye, move the two fingers sideways until they line up. Now close your right eye and open the left. The closer finger has ‘jumped’ to the right of the further finger. Repeat a few times. Compared to a distant background, both fingers have both jumped to the right, but the closer one jumps father. If you measure the angles through which they jump and the distance between your eyes, you can work out how far away the fingers are. For distant objects, the distance between our viewing positions must be greater than the distance between your ey
