There's a Challenge Problem at the end so you can test your understanding. Give it a try! You can check your work on our website: www.socratica.com/lesson/astronomical-distances-problems
a suggestion for you to return with the series "back to school with the Socratic" in Portuguese. I love this series. just like all the others... abraços do Brasil... 😄
This channel is one of the best !! Really fabulous video.. I really love astronomy and science so much and my interest went more deep as I explore your channel..! I never knew what is parsec but today I came across and learnt a new word from you!thanks a lot for this amazing videos..it's really helpful!! Loved your channel, and subscribed too!!
For me, light time would be the easiest and most logical way to measure ALL distances in space, from galaxies that are billions of light years away, to the sun, which is around 8 light _minutes_ away.
I speak fluent spanish and portuguese, but i speak very little english as i wish the socratic portuguese would come back liliana. ps: please come back. I really admire the work of the Socratic team.
AU was historically important because before the astronomers were able to measure the AU, they had to deal with relative distances within the solar systems. These relative distances were much easier to measure than to relate them to the distances on the earth. So for a while they worked with AU and doing precise measurements and calculations not knowing it’s value in other units all that well. Same goes for the parsec.
Hey @Socratica, I love you're vids and I am interested in buying your book about being a great student. However, the book is not (yet?) available in Italy. Will it be available some day?
Yeah the "Kisell run in 12 Parsecs" to me was just a script writer confusing the definition of a Parsec. I believe the sentence requires a unit of time, not distance.
@@Socratica The only problem is really what they mean by "parsec" in a galaxy far, far away, since it's an Earth-centric unit of distance. They should have stuck with "light-year".
30 AU to Neptune. 276,264 AU to the nearest star. The transition to using LY (4.37 LY to the nearest star) seems all the more necessary. But we get back to using incomprehensible millions and even billions, even using LY or PC as our unit of distance, on the scale of the observable universe. Even our "local group" of galaxies is 10,000,000 LY or 3,000,000 PC across, which is about 100 times the diameter of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
Very nice video, because this explains the concept of parallax from the very, very beginning. This is what I like. On a sidenote - if you want to write a sci fi story about a very uptight / correct / lawful scientist or something, he could say things like "we need to cross the distance of 4.503 parallax arc-seconds" or so. Would give this dude some colour, some old fashioned colour, if you know what I mean. Some retrofuturistics.
Heh. The video didn’t say it, but 1 light year is 63,241.1 AU. Proxmia Centauri is 268,770 AU away. We’re stuck guys. May as well have been born in that rogue stellar system from Iain M. Banks’s ‘Against A Dark Background’
I'm a little off topic but can u do a video on how to become interested in science. I do feel excited when I read sth related to it but I don't actually remember to open news and stuff to read regularly. thanks in advance.
@@georgwrede7715 Nope. A parsec is calculated using a triangle with apex angle of 1" and base of 1AU (radius of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.) And The average Sun-Earth distance is the radius of the orbit. Definition sound to hold.
The gaia mission (ESA) can measure parallaxes up to tens of micro-arcseconds. However, the conversion from parallaxes to distances is not as simple as 1/p due to the errors. It requires a more complex statistical analysis.
1. The term AU (Astronomical Unit) is quite vague and unintuitive. There should be a better name for such a unit. Because it is the average distance between the sun and the Earth we could call it SED (Sun-Earth Distance). 2. Even parsec is not an appropriate unit of distance when talking for example about the distance between galaxies or the size of the observable universe. Light-year is still preferable to parsec, because light-year not only refers to the distance but the time it takes for light to travel that distance. Inside the Milky-Way Galaxy we could use the distance between the sun and the center of the galaxy as an unit. Let's call this unit COW! Or MOO! If you can have an unit called AU, why not have have one called MOO?
There are more cubic light-years of space in the observable universe than there are H2O molecules in an olympic swimming pool :0 and a single drop of that water would have more molecules than there are grains of sand on Earth.
Oh gosh, we'd love it if you'd share our videos with your nephew. It's so important to encourage curiosity for kids! The other good news is that we recently started the Socratica Foundation, which will fund more content for Socratica Kids. Stay tuned!
If youre racing someone.... from the same point, to the same destination.... but your race isnt through space, but through time instead; i.e. a temporal destination.... then it makes sense youd be competing for shortest distance, rather than for shortest time, as you normally would in a race through normal space. Proof star wars has time travel.
@@Socratica I took astronomy this year and I’m doing the second part this spring! I’m so excited I thought this course would be hard to understand NOPE it’s easy and fun!
Those of us who work in the sciences do, for sure! But it seems like a lot of industries have the old British Imperial/US Customary system entrenched and it's going to take a miracle to switch over. Maybe one day.
Call upon the LORD JESUS today!!! ....there is no hope elsewhere. Today is the day of salvation. ONLY JESUS SAVES. 1Corinthians 15 1-4 is the gospel of salvation. Put your faith and trust in Him, NOT in man....satan is the god of this world for now....but....JESUS is coming. Make sure you know Him, and that He knows you!
