Astronomy for Young Folks

by Isabel Martin Lewis

[XXX]
ASTRONOMICAL DISTANCES

The grandeur of the scale upon which the visible universe is fashioned lies almost beyond human comprehension. In measuring the vast extent of our own solar system, which is but a single unit in the system of the stars, we may have recourse to some earthly standard of measurement, such as the mile. But when we desire to express in terms of units that can be grasped by our imagination, the distances of the stars that lie far, far beyond, we find that all ordinary standards of measurement become utterly inadequate for our purpose. In the measurement of celestial distances within the solar system the unit employed is either the familiar mile or kilometer or the "astronomical unit," which is the mean distance from the earth to the sun (ninety-two million nine hundred thousand miles in round numbers).

In the measurement of distances beyond the solar system the unit employed is either the light-year or more recently the parsec, which is rapidly replacing the light-year among astronomers. A "light-year" is the distance that light, with its finite but almost unimaginable velocity of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second, travels in a year. It is equal in round numbers to sixty-three thousand times the distance from the earth to the sun or approximately six thousand billions of miles. The parsec is equal to three and twenty-six hundredths (3.26) light-years, and it is approximately two hundred thousand times the distance from the earth to the sun. It is "the distance of a star with the parallax of a second," a fact which its name, parsec, conveys to us. In other words, at the distance of one parsec the distance from the earth to the sun, "the astronomical unit," would subtend an angle equal to one second of an arc. This angle is spoken of as the parallax of the star. The larger the parallax, that is, the larger the angle the astronomical unit or radius of the earth's orbit subtends, viewed from the star, the nearer the star is to us. The fact that there is no known star within one parsec, or three and twenty-six hundredths light-years, of the sun shows the immensity of the scale of the universe of stars.

Before considering the distances of the stars and the extent of the sidereal system of which our sun and his satellites form a part, let us undertake to express the distance of the sun, moon and planets from the earth and the extent of the solar system in terms with which we are familiar.

The nearest to the earth of all celestial bodies is its satellite, the moon. So near is the moon that if we should make on some great plain a model of the solar system in which the astronomical unit, the distance from earth to sun, would be four hundred feet, the distance between the earth and moon would be only one foot. On the same scale the most distant planet Neptune would be two and one-quarter miles away.

Granted that it were possible to escape the earth's gravitational bonds and to travel by our swiftest means of conveyance, the airplane, through interplanetary space, let us consider how long it would take us to reach the moon, sun and planets if our speed were maintained at a uniform rate of two hundred miles an hour. An airplane traveling at this rate would circumnavigate the earth in a little over five days and would reach the moon in seven weeks. A trip to the sun, however, would take fifty-three years.

After traveling for fourteen and a fraction years we would pass the orbit of Venus and eighteen years later the orbit of Mercury. If we preferred to travel outward from the earth in the direction of Mars and the outer planets instead of toward the sun, more than twenty-seven years would elapse before we would reach the orbit of Mars. An airplane journey to Jupiter would be a matter of more than two hundred years, to Saturn four hundred and fifty years, to Uranus nearly one thousand years, and to Neptune, about one thousand five hundred years. To cross the solar system on the diameter of Neptune's orbit in an airplane, traveling day and night without stopping at the rate of 200 miles per hour would take more than three thousand years. The sun's attraction reaches far beyond Neptune's orbit, however. There are comets belonging to the solar system compelled by the sun's attraction to accompany him on his travels through space that return periodically to the immediate vicinity of the sun from regions far beyond the orbit of Neptune and there is also the possibility that one or more undiscovered planets may travel around the sun in orbits far exterior to Neptune's orbit.

Measured in terms of familiar units, such as are employed for the measurement of distances on our own planet, the extent of the solar system is tremendously great. Viewed from Neptune, the sun is so far away that it presents no appreciable disk. It is in this sense star-like to the Neptunians, but at the distance of Neptune the stars appear no more brilliant and no nearer than they do to us.

To Neptune the sun, though star-like in form, supplies a very appreciable quantity of light and heat (one nine-hundredth of the amount the earth receives) while the amount of light and heat that Neptune receives from the nearest stars is entirely inappreciable. When our airplane reaches Neptune after a journey of one thousand five hundred years, it is, as it were, just clearing the ground for its flight to the stars. To cover the intervening space to the nearest star, traveled by light in four and a third years, an airplane would need fourteen and a half million years. In that time the solar system itself would be in some far distant part of the universe, since it is speeding onward through space at the rate of twelve miles a second or about four astronomical units a year.