Hi Enchilada & All,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enchilada
Using the distance to the Orion Nebula as 389 parsecs or 1270 +/- 76 light-years, means that the trig. parallax is 2.571 mas (milliarcsec.) ...
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Well done mate ... )
I'm still looking for my trig tables.
Just so we're all a little wiser in the future (actually its so
I can remember my high-school maths) (note to Jen: I expect you to commit this to memory for a later quiz) ... plugging that figure of 2.571 into a trig calculation to get a true separation in AU occurs ... precisely how? Can you show the working for me??
I've had to do this once before for an article I wrote (can't remember which one) and took instruction from a current 3rd year university level mathematics student working at Syd Obs and had it checked by Nick Lomb, and I seem to recall it was the Cosine rule -- yes??
Best,
the 'mathematically challenged' Les D