The Cosmic Ladder That Lets Us Map the Universe

Considering how massive our universe is, we know the distances to cosmic objects surprisingly well. What tools and clues do scientists use to measure distances that are so enormous they sound like made-up numbers? Hosted by: Reid Reimers SciShow has a spinoff podcast! It s called SciShow Tangents. Check it out at http://www.scishowtangents.org ---------- Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scishow ---------- Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: Bd_Tmprd, Harrison Mills, Jeffrey Mckishen, James Knight, Christoph Schwanke, Jacob, Matt Curls, Sam Buck, Christopher R Boucher, Eric Jensen, Lehel Kovacs, Adam Brainard, Greg, Ash, Sam Lutfi, Piya Shedden, Scott Satovsky Jr, Charles Southerland, charles george, Alex Hackman, Chris Peters, Kevin Bealer ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: http://dftba.com/scishow ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow ---------- Sources: https://books.google.com/books?id=0H0fjBeseVEC&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q&f=false https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00329826 http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/asras/measure_ss/measure_ss.html https://astro.unl.edu/naap/distance/distance.html http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1962AJ.....67..181P https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/experiments/lrr/ https://phys.org/news/2015-01-distance-sun.html https://phys.org/news/2014-05-distance-moon.html https://blogs.esa.int/venustransit/2012/05/30/measuring-the-size-of-the-solar-system-parallax/ https://lco.global/spacebook/distance/parallax-and-distance-measurement/ https://lco.global/spacebook/light/redshift/ https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780375713453 https://usm.maine.edu/planet/how-did-astronomers-determine-cepheid-brightness-depends-their-periods-wouldnt-they-have-had https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.1348 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/61f9/f419bbbb46424c1e215bae5cfc82452210b4.pdf [PDF] https://www.noao.edu/staff/shoko/tf.html Image Sources: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/iss034e054858/iss034e054858~large.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andromeda_Galaxy_(with_h-alpha).jpg https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1768.html https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10145 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13578 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M101_hires_STScI-PRC2006-10a.jpg