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Much of astronomy is based around measuring the distances to celestial bodies, and the distances are all rooted in a technique called stellar parallax. This has been used since the 19th century to measure the distances to stars, and all measurements of interstellar and intergalactic distances are based on the measurement of the tiny wobble in a star’s apparent position.The problem is, despite it being a fundamental technique at the core of astronomy, nobody has ever been able to make a simple, obvious demonstration of it, until now.
Did this help increase the accuracy of the measurements of their distances?
Excellent explanation, Scott! Thank you!
0:49 – Infinity? Controversial.
I accidentally turned on my high pass filter and your voice disappeared.
Wow, stars move with such grace and elegance trough the cosmos, like a ballet of mystical fairies over a calm pond…
Meanwhile, stars: *kazoo noises*
So, where they also able to achieve a more accurate measurement of the distance, or was it only just a cool thing to note?
I love that reference to “Best of both Worlds”.
Remember when running those parallax simulations required a supercomputer?
Well explained, Scott!
Awesome, thanks Scott. Even though I only understood the beginning and the signoff.
This is absolutely incredible. Thanks, Scott.
I can’t stop to be amazed by how much quality content you keep posting, thanks!
At this distance, the bitrate from New Horizons must have fallen down to 500 bps.
Wow this is so impressive?. Thank you Scott!
wow, i really want to try recreating this in elite dangerous!
Thank you for an explanation of the parsec I can understand.
6:19 Deep Impact (1998)
Brilliant Scott. When you mentioned Wolf 359 , you then vocalised my thoughts!
5:30 Isn’t Ross 154 where you start in Frontier Elite II?
Great stuff Scott. Thanks for your excellent contribution to making astronomy, science and space flight accessible to the man in the street. Why not come back to UK and host the Sky at Night?
I ♥️ Scott’s videos. Keep up the great work, Scott!
2:00 if you look at the bottom left on Proxima Centauri from new horizons view you can see that it looks like something dark is in front of the star!!
Man, I love this video. This is so interesting and so far from what I occupy myself with
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all year!
6:19 Nice.
This has got to be one of the coolest videos about star motion in space I’ve seen. Thanks!
I keep forgetting we have effectively sent the New Horizons out there with an 8 inch telescope, and it’s heading into deep space.
When Scott Manly tells you to fly safe you better be flying safe!
Scott Manley, the man with the Manliest voice in the galaxy
Note: the “as seen by Gaia” is a hypothetical curve as time series data from Gaia isn’t available yet.
I’m waiting tho
This video is amazing! All done with simplicity, clarity and great explanstion.
Thank you Scott. My younger daughter was amazed and thanks you too!
Godspeed to you.
I didn’t catch how many AU’s New Horizon was from the Earth. Was it mentioned?
New horizons the VR goggles of Astronomy
t=0:50 “On its way out to infinity” …. and beyond! You need to say “and beyond.” Huge missed opportunity.
This explanation helps fill in some really fundamental things that I haven’t heard anywhere else! Thanks so much
I wish we could patch Hubble up and send it out around Neptune, and use the parallax, to find more exo-planets
OMG I died when you made that Star Trek reference.
Thanks for explaining parsec. I kept forgetting to ‘Duck It Up.”
Are the videos of stars moving in ellipses exaggerated? I feel like they must be…
This spacecraft has a massive slug of plutonium powering all the systems into deep space
Is there an appreciable improvement in the accuracy of the measurement of the distance? Or does that only apply when measuring more distant objects?
Scott you have the Manleys voice i’ve ever heard. I reply your intro sometimes
6:55 It looks so sad and lonely out there
3:12 – wrong number of arc seconds in a circle
360 x 60 x 60 = 1,296,000 arc seconds
– still one of your coolest videos to date
Thank you very much for this. First time in life I see it on a picture.
Always drawn with a pencil (or a mouse) but never shown by itself. NASA has a good supply of big brains, as it seems.
Also, thanks for the allusions to Star Wars, only few days ago I watched the Rise of Sky walker and have been left “stunned”.
Cheers from the UK…
So it’s kind of like the retrograde motion effect you see on some planets throughout the year.
All the stars and our Sun is moving in the space I wonder what are they moving around? Is it the core of the galaxy or another very big star? Or these both are correct?
Amazing! Astronomy is evolving to see movement of stars and exoplanets. Impressive.
What is with the eclipse of Proxima Centauri on the new horizons image? Is something actually eclipsing it or is it just an effect from the focusing lenses?
I have an idea. What if we place two New Horizon like telescopes completely opposite with respect to our Sun? Then the parallax effect will be much larger I guess.
2:40 vídeo for a wallpaper will amazing 🔥
1:28 It looks as if there is an object in front of Proxima Centauri off to the left of it in the New Horizons picture, is this just due to the quality of the camera or some other optical trick, or is this possibly something blocking it in the Oort cloud?
Heheh, “Not to scale”
“SO FOR PROXIMA CENTAURI” – very smooth and unnoticeable transition, lol. 👍
Wow, that’s amazing!
I NEED THIS AS AN IMAGE IN VR! I NEED TO HAVE MY EYES KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE 7 BILLION KM APART!
1:31 The moment my jaw hit the floor. That’s awesome!
2:35 I just had an awesome LSD dejavu…
Wait.. is “I’m Scott Manley, fly safe” a prerecorded sample??!
If you think that’s a lot of parallax you should try ingesting the spice melange.
Ultima Thule, they should have kept this name. I always liked it in my Latin classes.
TACTICAL !! NOOOOO FOOOOOTON TORRRRRPEDOS !! It’s son of VGER !
4:23 I don’t think that the standard orbit matters that much, given that apparently nobody in the star wars universe knows what a parsec actually is
Simultaneous? How did they pin that down at such a large distance?
ah, this should also help in making already established parallax-distances more accurate, no?
Haha. Love the wolf 359 reference
R.I.P. to all the brave souls that lost their lives at Wolf 359, defending Humanity.
o7
That was a fun explanation! (And a Star Wars & Star Trek reference) also nice to see in the Wolf-image there were some other stars moving slightly.
I made it to about the 5 minute mark before my head exploded.
When you think that New Horizons already has done amazing job, it still manages to give some amazing additional bonus. Who knows, maybe it even might randomly meet something out there =))
incredible. seeing stellar parallax like this is amazing.
love how basically everything in the background is still too far away to tell with the naked eye. i think i spotted one other star in the background move slightly…
Imagine a future with a James Webb telescope equivalent orbiting each of the Solar System’s planets…
I am surprised at my visceral reaction to the simple observation you shared. It is almost as if I never studied astronomy or calculated unending parallax equations in the 70’s . The mind really does thrive on massive data input and pattern parsing. Thanks. Delightful.
Just damn cool stuff… I wish earth wasn’t such a crazy out of control place.. the things we could do if we could just pull together!.. Well it is all your problem now.. I have less future then past left and I am tired.. Good luck to all that stay behind!
At this rate we might be on our way to meet the Borg in 2063, we just need WWIII to happen and a few timetravel shenanigan
Way cool!! My brain exploded all over the wall but that was still intriguing
I didn’t know Wolf-359 was an actual star. LOL
Thank you so much for the high quality content once again.
Should we be also putting an observatory into a martian orbit to have instant large-base parallax observations all the time?
Love the Wolf 359 reference 🖖❤
Is New Horizons in an escape trajectory out of solar system or still in orbit?
You rock! That was the coolest thing I’ve seen so far today!
In Star Wars the Standard day is based off of Coruscant which just so happens
to have extremely similar orbit and rotation period as Earth. Hence where the standard AU almost certainly comes from in that galaxy.
Now I feel old. Scott mentioned a Spirograph. I got one when it first came out in 1965… for my 6th birthday.
Finally I know where the term parsecs comes from.
Thank you for the Trek reference, because to this non-astronomer, that’s the ONLY reason I know the name of that star.
Do they have plans to do this a lot more?
“parallax second”… who knew ole Han Solo was an armchair astronomy buff when he was dodging womprats in his Kessel run
6:15 “…and because the imaging is happening simultaneously…” – *Einstein joined the chat and started typing*
In other words.
Why Astronomy is hard,
And why I can’t do it
So glad the first thing you mentioned about Wolf 359 was the battle lol
Cool video by the way! What a cool visual demonstration of our position in the galaxy.
The URL for this video contains the word Cool and I can’t agree more
Distances in space always blows my mind, and seeing the small difference in position of the stars from earth and new horizon is so cool. Melts my brain.
This video is incredible! Especially the constellation part. Neat!
4:13 I’ve always wondered where the term “Parsec” came from; thank you Scott Manley for an “ah, that makes sense now” moment
Do you think it would be worth sending out two (or more?) space craft out of the solar system in different directions specifically to making parallax measurements?
SM: “This is Wolf 359…”
Please make a reference to…
SM: “… and no you can’t see any wreckage of Federation starships…”
You never disappoint!
7:09 It’s held together with coloured string?
I lost it at the “combined motion” picture at 5:53… no wonder in Dune (IIRC) they had to use drugs for proper space navigation
So if you sent a message by laser aimed to travel many light years to a human colony you’d have to take the movement into account of the home star and planet you’re firing it to?
Whoa. This is one of the coolest, most “THE STARS ARE MOVING” things I’ve ever seen.