Conundrum For Marky Francis!!

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You seem to have been brainwashed as a child before you learned what science is, or how it works. No one cares whether you are impressed or not.
How do scientists determine the distance from earth to stars? One primary method is by triangulation, using points in earth's orbits to triangulate to stars, which is something like setting up two observation points 2 feet apart and measuring the difference in angles between the two base points while focused on a point 1,000 miles away. For those trained in trigonometry, there is no way to derive any useful variation of degrees of angle measurements in such silly attempts to measure distances to stars.

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It turns out that measuring the distance to a star is an interesting problem! Astronomers have come up with two different techniques to estimate how far away any given star is.

The first technique uses triangulation (a.k.a. parallax). The Earth's orbit around the sun has a diameter of about 186 million miles (300 million kilometers). By looking at a star one day and then looking at it again 6 months later, an astronomer can see a difference in the viewing angle for the star. With a little trigonometry, the different angles yield a distance. This technique works for stars within about 400 light years of earth. (For details on triangulation, check out How GPS Receivers Work.)
 
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