Francis Berthomieu1 and Cristina Palici di Suni2
EAAE Summer School Working Group (1France, 2Italy)
Abstract
In the first part of this workshop we shall discover how to measure the distance between the observer and a distant object with the parallax method. This will be done in a very practical way, using two images taken with a digital camera from two different close points. It will be important to show that the accuracy of the result depends on many factors and can be improved a lot…
In 1989, a satellite called “Hipparcos” was launched to obtain parallaxes and proper motion of nearby stars, with a breathtaking accuracy of some milliarcseconds. The final Hipparcos Catalogue (120 000 stars) and the final Tycho Catalogue were completed in 1996 and used to create the Millennium Star Atlas, whose data are available through the Internet.
In the second part of this workshop, we shall collect these data about the stars of a wellknown constellation (Ursa Major or Leo for example) and use them to determine the movement of each of its stars and deduce the shape of the asterism in the past or in the future…
Two examples of 3D evolutive model of a constellation will be then suggested.