discuss the limitations of trigonometric parallax measurements

Issue: the measurement of distances to stars through the l,Ise of trigonometric parallax has limitations.

For The parallax angle of even nearby stars is extremely small, and errors may result in the positioning of the telescope which will give invalid results. The largest trigonometric parallax, for the nearest star other than the Sun, is less than one arc second (0.772"). Atmospheric effects such as scintillation reduce the resolving power ofte/escopes, and make the measurement of small angles difficult. The baseline of earth bound observations is limited to the earth's orbit around the sun ( I au baseline)

Against The limitations oftrigonometric parallax measurements are lessened by placing a telescope out in space away from the scattering effects of the Earth's atmosphere. The sharpness of the image is then determined predominantly by the quality of the optics and size of the telescope objective, rather than the atmosphere. A space telescope can observe stars at shorter wavelengths, which has the effect of increasing the resolving power. The parallax technique could be extended by increasing the baseline from which the measurements are made, so that annual parallax for any object would larger. For example, observations could be made from the larger orbit of Mars, or a satellite could be placed in orbit around the sun at some distance outside Earth's orbit, such as Gaia planned for

2012.