Ooh, this is super interesting! This video by The Science Asylum lays out the "distance ladder" in great detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpdwJNNskk htt

Ooh, this is super interesting! This video by The Science Asylum lays out the "distance ladder" in great detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpdwJNNskk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpdwJNNskk This wikipedia article also lays out the distance ladder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder so if our hypothetical "intelligent species on a planet orbiting an orphan star" were more than 30,000 light years away from the nearest star, they wouldn't be able to measure that distance with accuracy using the technology we have now. That might not apply to ranging whole galaxies? And they could get better with time? In any case, my idea that they might take off for a "nearby" star "only" ~100 light years away because they don't know better is foolish.