# Parsec

Last updated
Parsec
A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an astronomical object that has a parallax angle of one arcsecond (not to scale)
General information
Unit system astronomical units
Unit of length/distance
Symbolpc
Conversions
1 pc in ...... is equal to ...
metric (SI) units   3.0857×1016  m
~31 petametres
imperial  &  US  units   1.9174×1013  mi
astronomical units    2.06265×105  au
3.26156  ly

The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System. A parsec is defined as the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arcsecond, [1] which corresponds to 648000/π astronomical units. One parsec is equal to about 3.26  light-years or 31 trillion kilometres (31×1012  km ) or 19 trillion miles (19×1012  mi ). [lower-alpha 1] The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) from the Sun. [2] Most of the stars visible to the unaided eye in the night sky are within 500 parsecs of the Sun.[ citation needed ]

A unit of length refers to any discrete, pre-established length or distance having a constant magnitude which is used as a reference or convention to express linear dimension. The most common units in modern use are U.S. customary units in the United States and metric units elsewhere. British Imperial units are still used for some purposes in the United Kingdom and some other countries. The metric system is sub-divided into SI and non-SI units.

An astronomical object or celestial object is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structures that exists in the observable universe. In astronomy, the terms object and body are often used interchangeably. However, an astronomical body or celestial body is a single, tightly bound, contiguous entity, while an astronomical or celestial object is a complex, less cohesively bound structure, which may consist of multiple bodies or even other objects with substructures.

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound planetary system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of the objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest are the eight planets, with the remainder being smaller objects, such as the five dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly—the moons—two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.

## Contents

The parsec unit was probably first suggested in 1913 by the British astronomer Herbert Hall Turner. [3] Named as a portmanteau of the parallax of one arcsecond, it was defined to make calculations of astronomical distances from only their raw observational data quick and easy for astronomers. Partly for this reason, it is the unit preferred in astronomy and astrophysics, though the light-year remains prominent in popular science texts and common usage. Although parsecs are used for the shorter distances within the Milky Way, multiples of parsecs are required for the larger scales in the universe, including kilo parsecs (kpc) for the more distant objects within and around the Milky Way, mega parsecs (Mpc) for mid-distance galaxies, and giga parsecs (Gpc) for many quasars and the most distant galaxies.

An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets, and galaxies – in either observational or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, solar astronomy, the origin or evolution of stars, or the formation of galaxies. Related but distinct subjects like physical cosmology, which studies the Universe as a whole.

Herbert Hall Turner FRS was a British astronomer and seismologist.

A portmanteau or portmanteau word is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phones (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph that represents two or more morphemes.

In August 2015, the IAU passed Resolution B2, which, as part of the definition of a standardized absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scale, mentioned an existing explicit definition of the parsec as exactly 648000/π  astronomical units, or approximately 3.08567758149137×1016 metres (based on the IAU 2012 exact SI definition of the astronomical unit). This corresponds to the small-angle definition of the parsec found in many contemporary astronomical references. [4]

## History and derivation

The parsec is defined as being equal to the length of the longer leg of an extremely elongated imaginary right triangle in space. The two dimensions on which this triangle is based are its shorter leg, of length one astronomical unit (the average Earth-Sun distance), and the subtended angle of the vertex opposite that leg, measuring one arc second. Applying the rules of trigonometry to these two values, the unit length of the other leg of the triangle (the parsec) can be derived.

A right triangle or right-angled triangle is a triangle in which one angle is a right angle. The relation between the sides and angles of a right triangle is the basis for trigonometry.

One of the oldest methods used by astronomers to calculate the distance to a star is to record the difference in angle between two measurements of the position of the star in the sky. The first measurement is taken from the Earth on one side of the Sun, and the second is taken approximately half a year later, when the Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun. The distance between the two positions of the Earth when the two measurements were taken is twice the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The difference in angle between the two measurements is twice the parallax angle, which is formed by lines from the Sun and Earth to the star at the distant vertex. Then the distance to the star could be calculated using trigonometry. [5] The first successful published direct measurements of an object at interstellar distances were undertaken by German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel in 1838, who used this approach to calculate the 3.5-parsec distance of 61 Cygni. [6]

A star is type of astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, the brightest of which gained proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. However, most of the estimated 300 sextillion (3×1023) stars in the Universe are invisible to the naked eye from Earth, including all stars outside our galaxy, the Milky Way.

61 Cygni is a binary star system in the constellation Cygnus, consisting of a pair of K-type dwarf stars that orbit each other in a period of about 659 years. Of apparent magnitude 5.20 and 6.05, respectively, they can be seen with binoculars in city skies or with the naked eye in rural areas without photopollution.

The parallax of a star is defined as half of the angular distance that a star appears to move relative to the celestial sphere as Earth orbits the Sun. Equivalently, it is the subtended angle, from that star's perspective, of the semimajor axis of the Earth's orbit. The star, the Sun and the Earth form the corners of an imaginary right triangle in space: the right angle is the corner at the Sun, and the corner at the star is the parallax angle. The length of the opposite side to the parallax angle is the distance from the Earth to the Sun (defined as one astronomical unit (au), and the length of the adjacent side gives the distance from the sun to the star. Therefore, given a measurement of the parallax angle, along with the rules of trigonometry, the distance from the Sun to the star can be found. A parsec is defined as the length of the side adjacent to the vertex occupied by a star whose parallax angle is one arcsecond.

In mathematics and all natural sciences, the angular distance between two point objects, as viewed from a location different from either of these objects, is the angle of length between the two directions originating from the observer and pointing toward these two objects.

In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, which may be centered on Earth or the observer. If centered on the observer, half of the sphere would resemble a hemispherical screen over the observing location.

Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships between side lengths and angles of triangles. The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies. In particular, 3rd-century astronomers first noted that the ratio of the lengths of two sides of a right-angled triangle depends only of one acute angles of the triangle. These dependencies are now called trigonometric functions.

The use of the parsec as a unit of distance follows naturally from Bessel's method, because the distance in parsecs can be computed simply as the reciprocal of the parallax angle in arcseconds (i.e. if the parallax angle is 1 arcsecond, the object is 1 pc from the Sun; if the parallax angle is 0.5 arcseconds, the object is 2 pc away; etc.). No trigonometric functions are required in this relationship because the very small angles involved mean that the approximate solution of the skinny triangle can be applied.

Though it may have been used before, the term parsec was first mentioned in an astronomical publication in 1913. Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson expressed his concern for the need of a name for that unit of distance. He proposed the name astron, but mentioned that Carl Charlier had suggested siriometer and Herbert Hall Turner had proposed parsec. [3] It was Turner's proposal that stuck.

### Calculating the value of a parsec

In the diagram above (not to scale), S represents the Sun, and E the Earth at one point in its orbit. Thus the distance ES is one astronomical unit (au). The angle SDE is one arcsecond (1/3600 of a degree) so by definition D is a point in space at a distance of one parsec from the Sun. Through trigonometry, the distance SD is calculated as follows:

${\displaystyle \mathrm {SD} ={\frac {\mathrm {ES} }{\tan 1''}}}$
${\displaystyle \mathrm {SD} \approx {\frac {\mathrm {ES} }{1''}}={\frac {1\,{\mbox{au}}}{{\frac {1}{60\times 60}}\times {\frac {\pi }{180}}}}={\frac {648\,000}{\pi }}\,{\mbox{au}}\approx 206\,264.81{\mbox{ au}}.}$

Because the astronomical unit is defined to be 149597870700  m , [7] the following can be calculated:

 Therefore, 1 parsec ≈ 206264.806247096 astronomical units ≈ 3.085677581×1016 metres ≈ 19.173511577 trillion miles ≈ 3.261563777 light-years

A corollary states that a parsec is also the distance from which a disc one astronomical unit in diameter must be viewed for it to have an angular diameter of one arcsecond (by placing the observer at D and a diameter of the disc on ES).

Mathematically, to calculate distance, given obtained angular measurements from instruments in arcseconds, the formula would be:

${\displaystyle Distance_{star}={\frac {Distance_{earth-sun}}{\tan {\frac {\theta }{3600}}}}}$

where θ is the measured angle in arcseconds, Distanceearth-sun is a constant (1 AU or 1.5813×10−5 ly). The calculated stellar distance will be in the same measurement unit as used in Distanceearth-sun (e.g. if Distanceearth-sun = 1 AU, unit for Distancestar is in astronomical units; if Distanceearth-sun = 1.5813×10−5 ly, unit for Distancestar is in light years).

The length of the parsec used in IAU 2015 Resolution B2 [8] (exactly 648000/π astronomical units) corresponds exactly to that derived using the small-angle calculation. This differs from the classic inverse-tangent definition by about 200 km, i.e. only after the 11th significant figure. As the astronomical unit was defined by the IAU (2012) as an exact SI length in metres, so now the parsec corresponds to an exact SI length in metres. To the nearest meter, the small-angle parsec corresponds to 30,856,775,814,913,673 m.

## Usage and measurement

The parallax method is the fundamental calibration step for distance determination in astrophysics; however, the accuracy of ground-based telescope measurements of parallax angle is limited to about 0.01 arcseconds, and thus to stars no more than 100 pc distant. [9] This is because the Earth's atmosphere limits the sharpness of a star's image. [10] Space-based telescopes are not limited by this effect and can accurately measure distances to objects beyond the limit of ground-based observations. Between 1989 and 1993, the Hipparcos satellite, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), measured parallaxes for about 100000 stars with an astrometric precision of about 0.97 milliarcseconds, and obtained accurate measurements for stellar distances of stars up to 1000 pc away. [11]

ESA's Gaia satellite, which launched on 19 December 2013, is intended to measure one billion stellar distances to within 20 microarcseconds, producing errors of 10% in measurements as far as the Galactic Centre, about 8000 pc away in the constellation of Sagittarius. [12]

## Distances in parsecs

### Distances less than a parsec

Distances expressed in fractions of a parsec usually involve objects within a single star system. So, for example:

• One astronomical unit (au), the distance from the Sun to the Earth, is just under 5×10−6 parsecs.
• The most distant space probe, Voyager 1 , was 0.000703 parsecs from Earth as of January 2019. Voyager 1 took 41 years to cover that distance.
• The Oort cloud is estimated to be approximately 0.6 parsecs in diameter

### Parsecs and kiloparsecs

Distances expressed in parsecs (pc) include distances between nearby stars, such as those in the same spiral arm or globular cluster. A distance of 1000 parsecs (3262 light-years) is commonly denoted by the kiloparsec (kpc). Astronomers typically use kiloparsecs to express distances between parts of a galaxy, or within groups of galaxies. So, for example:

• One parsec is approximately 3.26 light-years.
• Proxima Centauri, the nearest known star to earth other than the sun, is about 1.30 parsecs (4.24 light-years) away, by direct parallax measurement.
• The distance to the open cluster Pleiades is 130±10 pc (420±30 ly) from us, per Hipparcos parallax measurement.
• The centre of the Milky Way is more than 8 kiloparsecs (26000 ly) from the Earth, and the Milky Way is roughly 34 kpc (110000 ly) across.
• The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is about 780 kpc (2.5 million light-years) away from the Earth.

### Megaparsecs and gigaparsecs

A distance of one million parsecs is commonly denoted by the megaparsec (Mpc). Astronomers typically express the distances between neighbouring galaxies and galaxy clusters in megaparsecs.

Galactic distances are sometimes given in units of Mpc/h (as in "50/h Mpc", also written "50 Mpc h−1"). h is a parameter in the range 0.5 < h < 0.75 reflecting the uncertainty in the value of the Hubble constant H for the rate of expansion of the universe: h = H/100 km/s/Mpc. The Hubble constant becomes relevant when converting an observed redshift z into a distance d using the formula d c /H × z. [13]

One gigaparsec (Gpc) is one billion parsecs — one of the largest units of length commonly used. One gigaparsec is about 3.26 billion light-years, or roughly 1/14 of the distance to the horizon of the observable universe (dictated by the cosmic background radiation). Astronomers typically use gigaparsecs to express the sizes of large-scale structures such as the size of, and distance to, the CfA2 Great Wall; the distances between galaxy clusters; and the distance to quasars.

For example:

## Volume units

To determine the number of stars in the Milky Way, volumes in cubic kiloparsecs [lower-alpha 2] (kpc3) are selected in various directions. All the stars in these volumes are counted and the total number of stars statistically determined. The number of globular clusters, dust clouds, and interstellar gas is determined in a similar fashion. To determine the number of galaxies in superclusters, volumes in cubic megaparsecs [lower-alpha 2] (Mpc3) are selected. All the galaxies in these volumes are classified and tallied. The total number of galaxies can then be determined statistically. The huge Boötes void is measured in cubic megaparsecs. [16]

In physical cosmology, volumes of cubic gigaparsecs [lower-alpha 2] (Gpc3) are selected to determine the distribution of matter in the visible universe and to determine the number of galaxies and quasars. The Sun is the only star in its cubic parsec, [lower-alpha 2] (pc3) but in globular clusters the stellar density could be from 100 to 1000 per cubic parsec.

The parsec is apparently used incorrectly as a measurement of time not distance in Han Solo's claim in A New Hope, the first Star Wars film, that he "made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs". This was retconned in Solo: A Star Wars Story . [17]

## Notes

1. One trillion here is taken to be 1012 (one million million, or billion in long scale).
2.  1 pc3 ≈ 2.938×1049 m3 1 kpc3 ≈ 2.938×1058 m3 1 Mpc3 ≈ 2.938×1067 m3 1 Gpc3 ≈ 2.938×1076 m3 1 Tpc³ ≈ 2.938×1085 m3

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The astronomical unit is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun. However, that distance varies as Earth orbits the Sun, from a maximum (aphelion) to a minimum (perihelion) and back again once a year. Originally conceived as the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion, since 2012 it has been defined as exactly 149597870700 metres or about 150 million kilometres. The astronomical unit is used primarily for measuring distances within the Solar System or around other stars. It is also a fundamental component in the definition of another unit of astronomical length, the parsec.

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