How do scientist measure the size of the sun?

1 Answer
Gió
May 21, 2016

I like this question although my answer probably it IS NOT the way they do...anyway I tried this:

Explanation:

Using trigonometry and remembering that in India they were doing these measurements thousands of years ago (ok they were far more clever than me!) I divided the problem in two parts:
enter image source here
Once you know s (the radius) you can evaluate perimeter and area of the Sun's disk.
The only problem can be the angle beta that should end up being VERY small indeed (and very difficult to measure)!!!

This is the best I could think of!

Related questions
See all questions in The Sun
Impact of this question
1771 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License