Distances

Several hundred years ago Copernicus was able to determine approximate distances between the planets through trigonometry. The distances were all found relative to the distance between the Earth and the Sun, the astronomical unit. Kepler refined these measurements to take into account the elliptical orbits. However, they did not know how large an astronomical unit was.

To establish an absolute distance scale, the actual distance to one of the planets had to be measured. Distances to Venus and Mars were measured from the parallax effect by observers at different parts of the Earth when the planets were closest to the Earth.

Knowing how far apart the observers were from each other and coordinating the observation times, astronomers could determine the distance to a planet. The slight difference in its position on the sky due to observing the planet from different positions gave the planet's distance from trigonometry. The state-of-the-art measurements still had a large margin of uncertainty. The last major effort using these techniques was in the 1930's. Parallax observations of an asteroid, called Eros, passing close to Earth were used to fix the value of the astronomical unit at 150 million kilometers.

With the invention of radar, the distance to Venus could be determined very precisely. By timing how long it takes the radar beam travelling at the speed of light to travel the distance to an object and back, the distance to the object can be found from distance = (speed of light) × (total time)/2. The total time is halved to get just the distance from the Earth to the object. Using trigonometry, astronomers now know that the astronomical unit =149,597,892 kilometers. This incredible degree of accuracy is possible because the speed of light is known very precisely and very accurate clocks are used. You cannot use radar to determine the distance to the Sun directly because the Sun has no solid surface to reflect the radar efficiently.

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