Why is a parsec useful in astronomy?

1 Answer
aniruddho r.
Nov 21, 2015

There are mainly two reasons.

Explanation:

  1. It's the largest unit of distance.
  2. To measure distance of astronomical objects, astronomers usually measure the parallax angle. The parsec can be used readily with that data. So it makes calculations easy.

Parsec means parallax angle of one arcsecond.

Related questions
See all questions in Scale of Earth, Sun, Galaxy, and Universe
Impact of this question
2791 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License