How Do Astronomers Measure Distances to Stars?

What kind of animals live on an ice planet like Hoth? How would the habitat on Tatooine allow different organisms to thrive? Connect social studies, science, and Star Wars in one engaging activity that focuses on the ecosystems...

Four fabulous activities immerse amateur astronomers into measuring objects that we cannot handle. The experiences are applied to NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, which will take measurements of planets around stars other than our...

Stars exist from a few million years to over 10 billion years, depending on their mass. Scholars perform a play acting as stars to learn about their different life cycles. They develop an understanding of many of the fundamental concepts...

Pupils often wonder how we know the distance to various stars. Starting with a thought experiment and progressing to a physical experiment, they determine the brightness and distance to various stars. The evaluation requires...

How can you determine the distance between two objects when one is incredibly far away? Discover how early astronomers and mathematicians calculated quantities such as the distance between Earth and the Sun in an insightful video. The...

Star light, start bright! What do the brightness and color of stars tell us about the stars we see at night? Learners explore the life of stars with an information-packed video. Topics include the relationship between mass and...

Determining the position of a star or other object in three-dimensional space is an important concept in astronomy. Finding stellar longitude (called right ascension) and latitude (declination) is easy enough, but it is much harder to...

A celestial body's distance from Earth makes studying its characteristics much more difficult. Learn how scientists use indirect measures to determine the size of stars. The interactive activity has individuals adjust the size of binary...

An excellent website detailing how a star's properties can be determined, and how these properties lead to the way a star is classified.

When describing distances in the solar system, it can be cumbersome to use common units of length, such as kilometers or miles. Instead, scientists use astronomical units to make the numbers more manageable. Watch this video description...