Weblog
2 September 2014
NASA, John Lanoue
The Pleiades is an asterism within the constellation Taurus. It’s an open cluster of vivid stars, which makes it very straightforward to seek out within the evening sky. Really easy that it’s typically confused with the large dipper. It additionally occurs to be about 380 mild years away. Or 450 mild years, relying on which measurement you belief.
The gap to star clusters could be tough to pin down. With a single star (as long as it isn’t too distant) you should utilize a methodology often known as parallax. You’ll be able to see the impact of parallax with a easy experiment. Maintain up your thumb at arm’s size, and take a look at it with just one eye. With out shifting your thumb, swap eyes, and you will notice that your thumb seems to maneuver relative to extra distant objects. This shift is named a parallax shift. Should you convey your thumb nearer and do the experiment once more, you’ll see that the parallax shift is bigger. Whether it is farther away, the parallax shift is smaller.
In astronomy we will use the altering place of Earth in its orbit because the shift in perspective, and distant background stars as a reference for the parallax. However in star clusters that turns into a problem. It’s tough to differentiate distant background stars with stars within the cluster, so it’s laborious to discover a reference for the parallax. With the Pleiades this has led to some debate as to its distance.
Carl Melis, et al
The Hubble house telescope has made parallax observations of three stars within the cluster, and located a distance of 440 mild years, and floor based mostly parallax observations additionally give an identical distance. However the outcomes of an area telescope often known as Hipparcos gave a parallax measurement of about 385 mild years. You may argue that in case you have a number of distance measurements, and certainly one of these is just not just like the others, the outlier might be improper. However on this case Hipparcos, also called the Excessive Precision Parallax Amassing Satellite tv for pc, was particularly designed to measure stellar distances, so one would suppose it ought to be right. This turned often known as the Hipparcos anomaly.
This week in Science a brand new measurement of the gap to the Pleiades has been introduced, and it clearly exhibits that Hipparcos is improper. The authors used observations from the Very Lengthy Baseline radio Interferometry (VLBI) radio telescope array, from which they made a exact parallax measure of a number of stars within the cluster. What they discovered is that the cluster is 440.0 mild years away, confirming earlier observations, and invalidating the Hipparcos end result.
This result’s essential for 2 causes. First, it confirms that our understanding of younger vivid stars is right. If the Hipparcos outcomes have been proper, then stars within the Pleiades could be dimmer than stellar fashions predict. We now know that these stars are as vivid as fashions had predicted. Second, it raises questions on different stellar distance measurements made by Hipparcos. The satellite tv for pc was particularly designed to measure stellar distances, and whether it is 10% off for the Pleiades, it might be equally improper about different star clusters.
This latter problem might be resolved with new satellite tv for pc often known as Gaia, which may also take a look at the parallax of assorted stars. It’s nonetheless within the strategy of coming on-line, however when it does astronomers are going to look very carefully at its measurements to make sure it doesn’t have an identical systematic bias.
