Orion's Belt

[sidkid]

Whilst taking my postprandial stroll this very clear evening, I was looking at Orion and a question popped into my head. Alnitak (on the left in Orion's Belt) is approximately 800 light years away. If the other two stars in the Belt were the same distance from us (Alnilam is actually 1340 light years away and Mintaka is 915 light years away) How far away from each other would they be?

[ChuckFickens]

So you are pretty much asking what the straight line separation distances would be between points on a 800 light year diameter sphere?

Measure the angular difference when you view them then look up Pythagoras

[NazNomad]

Triangulation ...

... make Earth and any 2 of the stars the points of a triangle, you know the distance of the 2 sides from earth to each planet. You can work out the angle between those 2 sides (by sighting along a protractor, for instance).

I'm not doing the maths for you, lol.

[ChuckFickens]

LOL naz...

It's not the maths I didn't want to do, it's the looking up the two known values that put me off :)

[NazNomad]

I hear ya. ;-)

It's never going to be accurate, unless you step it out with a yardstick, anyhow.

[NazNomad]

... and ai wasn't about to go out in the garden to freeze my ass off looking down a protractor, lol

[mike11111]

I won't sleep now till someone tells me the answer.

[NazNomad]

42

[mike11111]

That'll do for me, nighty night.

[sidkid]

@Chuckfickens, still being a smug knowall then. Did Ricky Gervaise base his IT guy in The Office on you?

[Calibax]

Strange question but you don't need a protractor or Pythagoras. If you measure the apparent distance between them on a ruler held 1 metre away, say 1cm (0.01m) the the distance between them 800 light years away (approx 800 x 10^19m) will be 800 x 10^19 times further than measured 1 meter away or approx 8 light years. You can do the actual measurement and use the exact length of a light year if you really want!