How far away is Polaris? Where can I find reliable distances to nearby stars?

Hello,

We now have an excellent way to find out the distances to
(relatively) nearby stars: the Hipparcos catalog from a
European space mission was released last summer. I checked
the catalog for you and found that the distance to Polaris
is 132 parsecs. There are 3.26 ly in one parsec, so the
distance to Polaris is 430 ly. Polaris is a Cephied star,
a type of variable star. That makes it tricky to get the
distance from the brightness of the star. The Hipparcos
satellite made a trigonometric measurement which is more
secure. However, the measurement still has an uncertainty
of plus or minus 100 ly, which is larger than one would like;
the reason is because Polaris is so far away. It is near
the limit of what Hipparcos could reach.

Regards,
Debra Fischer

> Subject: stellar distances
>
> I am trying to find out the distance to the pole star. In one reference
> I found on the web 300 ly was the figure given while a second source
> gave 690 ly. My question for you is what is the distance and is there a
> generally accepted reference avalable on line to get such information?
> Thanks.
>

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