whats a Parsec,anyways?

so i looked it up!

so i was thinking, to travel one parsec in a week seems like such a small distance, so i looked up exactly how big a distance that is. a parsec is 3.09 x 10 to the 13th power kilometers, or 3.26 lightyears, or 6,274,130,000 (over 6 billion) times the diamteter of the earth, which is 7, 926 miles across. Yes, I am a nerd
26,564 views 17 replies
Reply #1 Top
also, if you were traveling at one million MPH, it would take almost 6,000 years to travel one parsec
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In a recent game I had a transport that moved 34 parsecs per turn. MmMMmmMMmmm speedy.
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lol, it sort of gives your people a sense of relief knowing that if an invading Drengin fleet is currently right next to Earth, its still several trillion miles away
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https://www.galciv2.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=164&AID=88141
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distance between your first and third forfinger on the screen map. an example... Use your first forefinger as a starting point on the monitor screen. As you are doing this use your third forfinger on the same hand and place it on your destination point on the screen. This will give you the formula to ascertain the correct parsecs you wish to travel. Add the number of squares you see on the screen between the two forefingers. Divide this number by 4 and then add 6. You should have it. HOWEVER, If the first forefinger is longer than your third forefinger then please reverse this procedure. If you by chance have a fourth forefinger on the same hand then I would use the second and fourth if the first is too long and the third too short. If all else fails, just use your middle finger and point upward.
Hope that helped
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Lyndy62 just so you know i put the orders in to have you put before the firing squad before the emperor. After showing him your post he has agreed that you should be shot on sight for making the imperial navigators use their forefingers for navigation distances.
Reply #7 Top
Well, I guess parsec it one of those words that are used under the "no idea what it means, but it sounds cool" premise. It's been incorrectly used for a time unit before (Han Solo, Star Wars), so I guess applying a wrong scale it not the largest inaccuracy ever done to it.
That's why most space shooters use "Klicks" as unit for distance...
Reply #8 Top
A parsec is the time that it take for a section of parsley to travel from your hand to the sauce pan. In galactic terms that's (-10 times negative 309 furlongs per fortnight divided by the amount of butter in micrograms times the hours that you watch Molto Mario minus the (Rachael Ray constant)). Plus 42. Always plus 42.

You're welcome.
Reply #9 Top
Quote: "A true parsec is 3.26 light years"

So, if I'm right, when you travel one parsec in one week (hmmm, just say that one year have 52 weeks, then: 3.36 light years * 52 = 160.52 light weeks), you travel around 170 times faster than light! Well, that's fast... so, when your transport movet 34 parsecs per turn (turn is one week?), it moved (170 * 34) = 5780 times faster than light!

satisfied?
Reply #10 Top
I hope you have all read the link posted by PJ. It explains what is a parsec for this game. Very important since the map is full of stars and planets are generally at 2 or 3 parsec sof their sun
In short, for the game, a parsec is the distance than can be folded by a basic hyperdrive. But proximity of stars and planets reduce this distance
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But you're not going really fast until you've done the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs.

- Ash
Reply #12 Top
"...It's been incorrectly used for a time unit before (Han Solo, Star Wars)..."

Actually in Star wars it meant that all the black holes near kessel warped space so he actually went less distance than anyone else. Skirts the blackholes, VERY closely.

Anyone read the manual (obviously yes) The gigantic galaxy is truly massive. I can't wait...
Reply #13 Top
"...It's been incorrectly used for a time unit before (Han Solo, Star Wars)..."

Actually in Star wars it meant that all the black holes near kessel warped space so he actually went less distance than anyone else. Skirts the blackholes, VERY closely.

Anyone read the manual (obviously yes) The gigantic galaxy is truly massive. I can't wait...


Exactly, the kessel mines are in a region of space with MANY black holes. Solo was bragging about using the SHORTEST distance to get there and therefore went much closer to any particular black hole than anyone else. (Personally, while I would be impressed that he had a ship that stayed together under the stress, I would be very leary of a pilot crazy enough to break this record.) God I am a geek.

Chris.
Reply #14 Top
The alpha Centauri cluster (3 stars actually) is 4.3 light years away (Well centauri Proxima, a dwarf is the closest, the 2 'sun-like' stars Centauri A and B are slightly farther). That places it over a parsec away, and it is the closest star system to us! Either we are REALLY alone, or a parsec isn't really that large.

Chris.
Reply #15 Top
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec

For the derivation of the Parsec. My only quibble with the article is that it may not be obvious that they are using the small angle approximation in the intro, i.e. sin X ~ tan X ~ X for small X, yet later on there is this mention of using the tangent function, which will confuse people without a good understanding of trig into thinking there are 2 different derivations in the article--there aren't. So you can just figure out the reciprocal of one arcsecond in radians (360 * 60 * 60 / 2pi) and that's how many AUs there are in a parsec (about 206265). Also after reading this article you'll see why AUs (1 Astronomical Unit = distance from earth to the sun) are the building block of the parsec, not light years.
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well, mathmatically speaking, it IS derived using trig: where at a distance on one parsec, a length of 1 AU subtends and angle of 1 arcsecond (or 1/3600 of a degree) so its the distance where if you look at the earth and the sun, the lang between them is 1/3600 of a degree. thats pretty F'in far away!
Reply #17 Top
hahaha, theres som friggin hilarious posts here i almost pissed myself, and some very intelligent posts. cheers to GC fans