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William Shunn
shunn
18 November 2008 @ 09:27 am
A suggestion for Rand McNally  
There are plenty of sources that list the distances of various stars from Earth, but does anyone know of a source for looking up the distances of stars from one another? If not, I may have to dust off some spherical geometry that I would rather leave in its rusty box.

Specifically, I need to know the distance between Tau Ceti and Van Maanen's Star.

Update:  I found the specific answer I needed—Tau Ceti and Van Maanen's Star are 6.2 light-years apart—but I'd still be happy to be pointed toward a more general resource.


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purpleCthulhu: Astronomy[info]purplecthulhu on November 18th, 2008 08:59 pm (UTC)
I think you're going to have to do the geometry. This isn't the kind of question that astronomers usually need to ask. A good starting point for doing it is probably the Hipparcos database which has detailed measurements of the positions of many nearby stars.

For more info and access to the catalogs start here:

http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=HIPPARCOS

(I was sent here by [info]fjm as her tame local astrophysicist)
Matthew Kressel[info]mattkressel on November 19th, 2008 03:29 am (UTC)
Try Celestia. It's free and will chart distances to and from stellar objects.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
There are plenty of sources that list the distances of various stars from Earth, but does anyone know of a source for looking up the distances of stars from one another? If not, I may have to dust off some spherical geometry that I would rather leave in its rusty box.

Specifically, I need to know the distance between Tau Ceti and Van Maanen's Star.

Update:  I found the specific answer I needed—Tau Ceti and Van Maanen's Star are 6.2 light-years apart—but I'd still be happy to be pointed toward a more general resource.


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