Re: Anybody See Any Holes in this Argument?

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:53:00 -0700 (MST), "gordon brown"
<gbrown@euclid.colorado.edu> said:
> Dick,
>
> I don't see any holes in your argument, but I think some of your figures
> are not accurate. According to an elementary astronomy text that I have
> that was published in 1955, the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is
> 80,000
> light years. (It is the Large Magellanic cloud that is 30,000 light years
> in diameter.) Both the Magellanic clouds are much closer to us than the
> Andromeda galaxy, which is 1,500,000 light years away.
>
> Gordon Brown
> Department of Mathematics
> University of Colorado
> Boulder, CO 80309-0395

Most of the papers use distance modulus for describing distances.
Translating distance modulus to light years is as follows:

32.6 * (10^(d/5))

The definition of distance modulus is the difference between apparent
and absolute magnitude due to the inverse square law of light. Absolute
magnitude is defined as the magnitude of an object at a distance of 10
parsecs.

The geometric calculation cited by the web page gives a distance modulus
for LMC of 18.58. This gives us a distance of 169,518 light years.
170,000 light years given on the web page is merely rounding up. As I
said earlier the 1997 calculation was revised in 2003. The newer
calculation gave a distance modulus of 18.56. This gives us a distance
of 167,965 light years +/- 4238 light years. Even with this newer,
lower, number the number given on the web page is still inside the
margin of error.
Received on Sun Nov 28 23:53:24 2004