Star Distances Q.How do we know how far away the stars are? A. "This is something that takes up weeks in an introductory astronomy class," said Andrew Fraknoi, an astronomer, who is the executive officer of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. However, he said, modern measurements depend on a relatively simple initial principal. "It involves triangulation, measuring how an object in the distance shifts when seen from one angle and then another angle," he said. Then simple geometry is used to compute the actual distance.
March 21, 1989