Measuring distance to the moon: Using only smartphone camera

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2021Mar 10

Lunar distance, also called Earth-Moon distance or distance to the Moon, is the average distance from the center of Earth to the center of the Moon. In this project of measuring the lunar distance, we have used two methods. Method-1(Using parallax): The process starts with capturing the moon from two different locations which are located at a sufficiently large distance. The pictures are clicked at the same moment such that at least two stars are visible around the moon. The background stars can be identified using skymap or any other application. Then the pictures are overlapped in a way that the stars completely overlap each other. Now the RA and Dec of the identified stars are found. Using RA and Dec the angular distance between them is determined. Now using the unitary method the angular distance between the moons on the overlapped image is calculated and then the formula of parallax is used. Method-2(Using Trigonometry): This method requires only one photograph of the moon with at least two background stars visible. After calculating the angular distance between the stars and by using that, the angle subtended by the diameter of the moon is measured. Then using simple trigonometry the lunar distance is calculated. We have attached our results in the end. Team Members: Sanyam Jain-20192028 Prasanna Sneha-20193068 Mentored By: Bhuvan Jhamb-20174009 Apoorva Singh-20174165 Ardhya Kumar-20174014 Video Credits: Sanyam Jain Hoping to share more projects soon. Subscribe to our channel for more such videos. Team Astrowing