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Parsec, unit of measure |
| The parsec (symbol pc) is a unit of length used in astronomy. It stands for "parallax of one arc second". It is based on the method of trigonometric parallax, one of the most ancient and standard methods of determining stellar distances. The parallax of a star is half of the angular distance a star appears to move against the celestial sphere compared to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun (see the diagram at right). Equivalently, it is the angle subtended at a star by the radius of the Earth's orbit. One parsec is defined to be the distance from the Earth to a star that has a parallax of 1 arcsecond. Since the parallax method is the fundamental calibration step for distance determination in astrophysics, its unit of choice, the parsec, is the most used unit of distance in scholarly astronomical publications. Newspapers and popular science magazines prefer a more intuitive unit, the light year. |
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