Distance measurement

Where tape measures become too short and trundle wheels too laborious, several
types of instruments, from simple to sophisticated, are available for the job.
If high accuracy is not essential, a telescope with a crosshair scale in the eye
piece,
along with a surveyor s staff (also called stadia ) will do. In Fig. 1.2, ten
divisions on the telescope s eyepiece scale coincide with one 10 cm long field on
the staff, if posted 10 meters away. Move the staff to 20 meters, and the image
of
one shaded area will coincide with only 5 crosshair scale divisions. At 100 mete
rs,
scaling of staff and crosshair coincide. In short, the distance of the staff and
the
apparent size of its scales in the telescope are inversely proportional to each
other.
Although this method lacks precision, it excels in simplicity. In a similar appr
oach
to measuring the distance to neighboring stars, Astronomers use the diameter
of the orbit of Earth in ways of a staff. With 149.6 million kilometers from
the Earth to the Sun, our planet s position in the galaxy shifts by
2  149:6 299:2 million kilometers in six months;
Fig. 1.2. Reticule-based distance measurement
Distance measurement 3
causing an equivalent drift in the apparent positions of the stars. In 1838, Fri
edrich
Wilhelm Bessel (1784 1846) was first in reliably measuring this motion, called
parallax, on the star 61 Cygni in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Though
only few fixed stars locate close enough to show parallactic displacements, this
method created a specific astronomic length-unit, the parsec, equal to the dista
nce
from where the radius of the orbit of Earth is seen one arcsecond wide. With
360  60  60 1;296;000 arcseconds to the full circle, the circumference of a circle
with one parsec radius is 1;296;000  149:6  106 193:88  1012 kilometers,
which makes its radius equal to 193:88  1012=2p 30:857  1012 km. And
with 9:460550  1012 km to the light-year (ly), this leads to the conversion
1 parsec
30:857  1012
9:460550  1012 3:26 ly :
The unit we got here seems enormous, and yet, no fixed star locates within the o
ne
parsec range. The Sun s closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri on the southern celestial
hemisphere, is 1.33 parsecs or 4.34 light-years away.
Triangulation
The efforts of ancient Egyptians in re-appropriating the fertile land along the
Nile
every year after the waters of the river swept their landmarks away mark the fir
st
steps in the development of geometry and mathematics, which much later in histor
y
inspired generations of scientists in the Hellenistic age, such as Euclid, Archi
medes,
Eratosthenes, and Heron of Alexandria. The latter was first to come up
with a formula for the area of a triangle based on the lengths of its sides.
Since the triangle is the building block of all other polygons, Heron s formula
can be used for multifaceted areas as well. For instance, a quadrilateral can be
split
into two triangles, the pentagon into three, the hexagon into four, and an n-sid
ed
polygon into n  2 triangles. If you own a piece of land bordered by the sides a,
b, d, and e, you can find the square feet of your property by measuring the leng
th
of one of the diagonals, c, and apply Heron s formula to the resulting triangles
a  b  c and d  e  c. For a start, call the circumference of the first triangle 2s,
so that
s
1
2 a b c ;
and use Heron s formula for the area A of said triangle as follows:
A
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiff
iffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffifi
ss  as  bs  c
p
:
Repeat that process for the second triangle, add the two areas, and voila` you
got the square feet of your four-sided land without buying a theodolite.
Although we remember Heron of Alexandria as a prolific writer on geometry
and mechanics, including pneumatics, we aren t even sure about his name. Some
called him Heron, others Hero, and his date of birth has not been documented.
4 1 The measurement of length
Historians place his lifetime between
250 BC and 150 BC. He might have been
a Greek or an Egyptian with Greek education,
but his mark on history remains,
whatever his lifetime and nationality!
Modern times surveyors use an arbitrary
baseline between two landmarks, A
and B in Fig. 1.3, to describe the position
of an object P by its plane coordinates, x
and y.
We have two distinct methods to determine an object s position: triangulation
and trilateration. Triangulation is defined as (take a deep breath) measurement
of the position of an isolated point in space accomplished by constructing a sca
lene
triangle with a known base and known angles of the two adjacent legs. In
Fig. 1.3a, the coordinates x and y of point P are derived from the length of the
baseline
We have two distinct methods to determine an object s position: triangulation
and trilateration. Triangulation is defined as (take a deep breath) measurement
of the position of an isolated point in space accomplished by constructing a sca
lene
triangle with a known base and known angles of the two adjacent legs. In
Fig. 1.3a, the coordinates x and y of point P are derived from the length of the
baseline,
a, and the angles a and b, measured from points A and B to P. The geometry
of the figure allows for direct deduction of the relations
x tan a a  x tan b ;
which yields
x a
tan b
tan a tan b 1:1
and likewise
y a
tan a
tan a tan b
: 1:2
Make A and B the milestones on a straight section of highway, and P the location
for, say, a planned gas station, and you get x and y as the coordinates of P rel
ative
to the origin of the stretch of highway you selected as baseline.
If the baseline AB is drawn in the direction east-west, the geographical coordin
ates
of the object P can be found by converting x and y into degrees of longitude
and latitude and summing their values to longitude and latitude of point A. Keep
in mind that for a place in North America, x and western longitude are counted i
n
opposite directions, which makes the values of x negative.
The degree of latitude equals 60 nautical miles, which makes 10 (minute of
arc) of latitude equal to one nautical mile. In metric units, the degree is 111
km.
These values are not exact; due to the oblate shape of the Earth, they vary slig
htly
with the observer s location.