Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A unit of angle; 1/60th of an arcminute, or 1/3600th of a degree.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. a 60th part of a minute of arc
Etymologies
Examples
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See, I'm just biased towards interferometers; -) ** One arcsecond is 1/60th of an arcminute, and one arcminute is 1/60th of a degree.
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The Very Long Baseline Array, stretching from Hawaii to the Caribbean, regularly produces images with milli-arcsecond resolution.
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Whereas ground-based optical telescopes have sub-arcsecond** resolution, and Hubble is quoted as having a resolution of 0.085 arcseconds, single-dish radio telescopes can only get resolutions of a few arcminutes.
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In astronomy, the preferred unit of measurement for such distances is the parsec, which is defined as the distance at which an object will appear to move one arcsecond of parallax when the observer moves one astronomical unit perpendicular to the line of sight to the observer.
Ann Aguirre » Blog Archive » A day in the life – blog Jeopardy
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To image something green on the sky to 1 arcsecond (which optical telescopes routinely do) thus requires a telescope of size at least 10 cm.
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Quite nice, with image/elevation data of the world down to 1 arcsecond.
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The parsec in turn is defined to be a certain multiple of the astronomical unit original such that the parallax of a star as it appears from the Earth is 1 arcsecond.
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In the former case, the [OIII] emission should extend over a few-tenths of an arcsecond and be spatially resolved by HST and STIS, while in the latter case, the emission lines will be unresolved.
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While dynamical masses can be obtained from the ground in the near-IR, obtaining precise temperatures require access to optical data which, for these sub-arcsecond binaries, can only be obtained from space with Hubble.
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Kurt's weblog has an interesting correspondence with David Sandwell from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was involved in the making of the 30 arcsecond bathymetry layer and who confirms that this is the one Google used.
Comments
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