Download Stellar Parallax Problems

Stellar Parallax Problems
1. A star has a measured stellar parallax of 0.043˝. What is its distance from the Sun in parsecs, light
years and AUs?
2. A star has a measured stellar parallax of 35.2 mas. What is its distance from the Sun?
3. A star has a measured stellar parallax of 0.023˝ as measured from the Earth. What would be the parallax
of the star if it were measured from Saturn which is 9.5 AU from the Sun?
4. A star has a measured stellar parallax of 305 mas as measured from the Earth. The same star has a
measured parallax of 2,898 mas as measured from some other planet in our solar system. What other
planet was the second stellar parallax measurement taken from?
5. The European Space Agency's Gaia mission, launched 19 December 2013, will be able to measure
parallax angles to an accuracy of 10 microarcseconds (0.010 mas). What would be the largest distance
to a star that the Gaia spacecraft could measure from its orbit around Earth?
6. A. The European Space Agency sent an exact copy of the Gaia mission to orbit Saturn and take parallax
measurements, what would be the largest distance to a star that the Gaia spacecraft could measure from
that orbit?
B. The Milky Way galaxy has a diameter of about100,000 light years and we are about 28,000 light
years from the center. In a sentence describe how much of the galaxy this hypothetical Gaia-copy
mission could see (ignoring other factors like obscuration due to interstellar dust)?
C. The original Gaia mission cost about a Billion dollars. This hypothetical mission might coust about
the same even though it is farther away since the development costs have already been covered.
Would you be willing to vote to fund such a mission as part of an international consortium?