Photometric parallax method

The photometric parallax method is a method of data analysis used in astronomy that uses the colours and apparent brightnesses of stars to infer their distances. It was used by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to discover the Virgo super star cluster.

Unlike the stellar parallax method, photometric parallax can be used to estimate the distances of stars over 10 kpc away, at the expense of much more limited accuracy for individual measurements. Strictly speaking, it does not actually employ any measurements of parallax and can be considered a misnomer.

See also

• Spectroscopic parallax
• Dynamical parallax