How are distances to objects measured?
I posted a question about an in-game discovery on Astronomy, to see if a certain type of object I found could actually exist in nature.
While the general answer seems to be "yes", there remains some ambiguity on the point of exactly what the thing should be called.
One of the major factors in that determination may have to do with how big the object is. or how far it is from another celestial body. However, since celestial bodies themselves can be extremely large, an error equal to the radius of the body could be problematic.
So, this raises the question:
Are in-game distances from stars/planets/etc. given as a distance from the center, or the surface, of an object?
Secondarily, it would also probably be useful to know if there's a way to accurately measure the size and/or mass of in-game celestial bodies.
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How is object distance measured?
The measured distance is determined on the basis of one view of an object presented on one image. The image is made at a constant and invariant setting of the optical path such as: focus, aperture and focal length. The article presents a method of measuring the dis- tance to an object through digital image processing.What measures the distance between two objects?
Distance is the measure of length between two points. To measure is to determine how far apart two geometric objects are. The most common way to measure distance is with a ruler. Inch-rulers are usually divided up by eighth-inch (or 0.125 in) segments.What is used to measure the distance between objects in space?
Because space is so big, many astronomers do not like to say how far away things are using miles or kilometers. Instead, we use a measurement that we call a parsec. Remember Alpha Centauri, the closest star? It is 1.347 parsecs, or 41,560,000,000,000 (or 41.56 trillion) kilometers away.How are the distances in space calculated?
Lightyears. A common method for measuring distance in space is to measure how far light travels in one year: known as a lightyear, which is around 9.5 trillion km. If you want to be precise, the IAU regards a year as 365.25 days, making a lightyear 9,460,730,472,580,800m.Measurement Of the Distance
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