Oval Pistons?

What's a parsec? Can someone explain it in terms us earthbound
mortals can understand, please.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, gomez

http://www.harmsy.freeuk.com/glossary.html should do it.

 

Yebbut, we all know Chambers is wrong because Chambers is wrong about
"fora".....

 

*Billion*???

 

These galaxies are small, those ones are far, far away...

 

OK imagine the earth going around the sun. Now six months later its at
the other side of the sun. So the distance is very large. We will use
half of that distance for one side of an imaginary triangle in space

Now draw a triangle from the sun to the earth to something in space
and the angle at the sharp end is
one second (i.e. 1/3600th of a degree).

The distance from the earth to the object is one PAR SEC...

Its a really big distance used to measure how far things like stars and
galaxies are away from us...

--
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HAPPY CHRISTMAS !

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the PAR bit being from PARallax - the effect of making something
appear in a different place relative to something else when you move
your head (or your Earth) from one place to another. Something which
is around 3.26 light-years away (if memeory serves) will appear to
move by one arcsecond against the backdrop of "more distant" stars as
the Earth moves from one side of its orbit to the other (a separation
of a little under 300 million km (again if memory serves)).

 

Yes, but Chambers is *wrong* ;-))

 

<Murray mode>

You see, the joke is that a parsec is a bloody long way.

</Murray mode>

Although that's just peanuts for space...

Seriously. I deal with things that are megaparsecs in size...

 

I don't care how drunk you get her, Clare's never going to belive 6
inches is anywhere near *a* parsec...