I read on wikipedia what I've always known that the parallax of earth on either side of the sun is used to measure the distance of stars. What I'm wondering is couldn't they be using there telescopes and camera's in the distant parts of our solar system to measure from each side of the sun and get a more precise measurement? Look at these stats. A camera or telescope near Saturn would provide 10 times the width of Earth. Planet Distance in AU Travel time .................................................................... Mercury 0.387 193.0 seconds or 3.2 minutes Venus 0.723 360.0 seconds or 6.0 minutes Earth 1.000 499.0 seconds or 8.3 minutes Mars 1.523 759.9 seconds or 12.6 minutes Jupiter 5.203 2595.0 seconds or 43.2 minutes Saturn 9.538 4759.0 seconds or 79.3 minutes Uranus 19.819 9575.0 seconds or 159.6 minutes Neptune 30.058 14998.0 seconds or 4.1 hours Pluto 39.44 19680.0 seconds or 5.5 hours
It sure would. Of course, we don't have a telescope near Saturn.... And even if we did, it would take 14.7 years to get parallax data.
We do have some space probes that are a long way away from Earth now, though. I wonder if anybody has used the Voyager craft, or New Horizons or something, to make some parallax measurements. It doesn't seem like a stupid idea.
I read an article about it some years ago. Key takeaway was that it was considered, but the resolution of the instruments mounted on those craft aren't able to give you the precision that ground-based or LEO-based systems provide. I'll try and find it, but it was quite a while ago.... Edit: quite amazingly I found it (or at least something like it)!! Here.