It isn't easy to measure the distance of stars. We can't travel to them, counting the miles as we go, nor can we simply say that brighter stars are closer and dimmer ones more distant. Instead, we ...

PREVIOUS attempts to measure the annual parallax of intense radio stars 1,2 have indicated that their distances exceed 1/50 parsec. These results were obtained by using an interferometer arrangement ...

If a star is one parsec, or 3.3 light-years, from Earth, it should shift one arcsecond as the Earth moves from one side of its orbit to the other. However, no star is that close and for centuries ...

How can we grasp the enormity of space? One thing is sure: We should at least make our units of measurement as intuitive and friendly as possible. We often fail. Take, for example, cosmic expansion, ...