How Can We Quickly Calculate Distances to Stars Without Parallax?

[psychemage]

Atronomy and Cosmology aren't quite my thing. Anyone think/know of a way to calculate distances from stellar objects, particularly stars, on the fly (ie. from 1 to 5 sec) that doesn't require two telescopes a kilometer apart? I don't much care for parallax (please ignore my spelling). Thank you so much in adnvance to whom ever replies.


~Nick

 

[psychemage]

Anyone have any suggestions? Anything would be appreciated... thanks again

 

[Chronos]

'Standard candles' are usually relied upon for determining distances, especially those beyond the sensititivity of the parallax method [which is quite accurate but severely limited in range]. The first 'standard candles' [objects that have the same absolute brightness] were Cepheid variables. These, however, are too faint to be resolved beyond local galaxies. Certain, very bright types of supernova [SNe 1a in particular] are currently the most useful standard candles. We can approximate fairly distant objects [up to z~1.7] by this method. Gamma ray bursters appear to be the best candidate for the next generation of standard candles. They have been observed at distances up to z~6.5 - which is a quite a chunk of real estate.

 

[Phobos]

So, no, there is no simple, 5-second method to calculate the distance to stars. It requires precise measurements.