Han Solo boasts that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel run in fewer than 12 parsecs, causing
Star Wars
fans worldwide to think that parsecs are a measurement of time.
In truth, parsecs are a measurement of what quantity?
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The interesting backstory to the parsec and the stellar parallax is that the existence of stars even "moving around" as seen from Earth in annual cycles contradicts the geocentric theory, i.e., Earth is center of the universe. This visible effect, caused Earth's annual orbit, is so tiny that it wasn't until the 19th century before it could be confirmed. The fact that such an annual shift in position of stars wasn't [readily] visible was long used as an argument against heliocentrism.