Distances to stars

[mmcirvin]

People often ask me, "This is probably a stupid question, but do you know how astronomers know how far away stars are?" Actually, it's not a stupid question at all. It is very hard to find astronomical distances and astronomers use a collection of different techniques, most of which have large margins of error and only apply to certain types of objects. Fortunately I don't have to describe them all, because Ned Wright has a page describing one for each letter of the alphabet.