The diameter of an asteroid is determined to be 3460 m. In a small telescope the angular diameter of the aster?
Aric asked:
The diameter of an asteroid is determined to be 3460 m. In a small telescope the angular diameter of the asteroid is measured to be 4 seconds of arc. What is the distance to the asteroid?
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The diameter of an asteroid is determined to be 3460 m. In a small telescope the angular diameter of the asteroid is measured to be 4 seconds of arc. What is the distance to the asteroid?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:04 am
If the asteroid is measured to be 4 seconds of arc to the naked eye, determined by the telescope, then the asteroid would be 178419.057403738 kilometers away. If it appears as 4 seconds of arc through the telescope, then the actual distance also depends on the magnification of the telescope for me to solve that question.
Here’s how I did it if the asteroid is 4 seconds of arc to the naked eye. There are 1,296,000 arc seconds in a circle. If the asteroid appears to the naked eye as 4 seconds of arc, then 1,296,000 / 4 = 324,000 (asteroid spaces equal the full circle or it’s orbit if it were orbiting you). Each asteroid space is 3,460 meters in length. So the full circle is 1,121,040,000 meters. Divide 1,121,040,000 meters by pi (3.14159265358979) = 356,838,114.807477 meters, which is the diameter of the circle. Get the radius or half the diameter of the circle to get the distance. Which would be 178,419,057.403738 meters away or 178,419.403738 kilometers. magnetulsar