How do astronomers make sense out of the vastness of space? How do they study things so far away? Today Phil talks about distances, going back to early astronomy. Ancient Greeks were able to find the size of the Earth, and from that the distance to and the sizes of the Moon and Sun. Once the Earth/Sun distance was found, parallax was used to find the distance to nearby stars, and that was bootstrapped using brightness to determine the distances to much farther stars.

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Table of Contents
Ancient Greeks Finding the Size of the Earth 1:07
Earth/Sun Distance Began Our Use of Parallax 5:39
Brightness Relation to Distance 9:07

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PHOTOS/VIDEOS
Lunar Ecplise www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/04/15/lunareclipse_partial_apr142014_spica.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg [credit: Phil Plait]
Venus & Mercury [credit: Phil Plait]
Venus Transit www.youtube.com/watch?v=34mXua1n_FQ [credit: NASA]
Black Drop Venus Transit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_drop_effect#mediaviewer/File:BlackDrop-Venus-Transit.jpg [credit: Wikimedia Commons, H. Raab, Johannes-Kepler-Observatory]
New Horizons Approaching Pluto and Charon en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#/media/File:15-011a-NewHorizons-PlutoFlyby-ArtistConcept-14July2015-20150115.jpg [credit: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben]
Radio Telescopes Diagram scitechdaily.com/images/Radio-Telescopes-Settle-Controversy-Over-Distance-to-Pleiades.jpg [credit: Alexandra Angelich, NRAO/AUI/NSF]
61 Cygni archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_search?v=poss1_red&r=21+06+54.60&d=%2B38+44+44.9&e=J2000&h=30&w=30&f=gif&c=none&fov=NONE&v3= [credit: Caltech / National Geographic Society / STScI]
Proxima Centauri www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1343a/ [credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA]
Dying Star www.nasa.gov/images/content/64884main_image_feature_211_jwfull.jpg [credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]
Exploding Star www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1604.html [credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU)]
Animation of a Variable Star www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1323j/ [credit: NASA, ESA, M. Kornmesser]
Hubble's High-Definition Panoramic View of the Andromeda Galaxy hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/02/image/a/ [credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler]

1. Introduction to Astronomy
2. Naked Eye Observations
3. Cycles in the Sky
4. Moon Phases
5. Eclipses
6. Telescopes
7. The Gravity of the Situation
8. Tides
9. Introduction to the Solar System
10. The Sun
11. The Earth
12. The Moon
13. Mercury
14. Venus
15. Mars
16. Jupiter
17. Jupiter's Moons
18. Saturn
19. Uranus & Neptune
20. Asteroids
21. Comets
22. The Oort Cloud
23. Meteors
24. Light
25. Distances
26. Stars
27. Exoplanets
28. Brown Dwarfs
29. Low Mass Stars
30. White Dwarfs & Planetary Nebulae
31. High Mass Stars
32. Neutron Stars
33. Black Holes
34. Binary and Multiple Stars
35. Star Clusters
36. Nebulae
37. The Milky Way
38. Galaxies, part 1
39. Galaxies, part 2
40. Gamma-Ray Bursts
41. Dark Matter
42. The Big Bang, Cosmology part 1
43. Dark Energy, Cosmology part 2
44. A Brief History of the Universe
45. Deep Time
46. Everything, The Universe...And Life
47. Explore The Solar System:

In this Crash Course series, marvel at the wonders of astronomy with your host for this intergalactic adventure, the Bad Astronomer himself -- Phil Plait. In just 40 short lessons, you will learn the basics of the oldest science known to humanity.

Be sure to check out links to relevant Photos in the description for each video.