Distances in Cosmology

As I am often asked for the different distances that one may measure in an expanding universe, I put here some viewgraphs. They show various distance measures in dependence of redshift z. The plots are done for the currently most favoured WMAP-Cosmology, which is

OmegaMatter = 0.27
OmegaLambda = 0.73
H0 = 71

If you want to learn more about distance measures in the universe I recommend the very good overview by David W. Hogg (astro-ph/9905116) or, for the very detailed view, S. Weinberg: "Gravitation and Cosmology" (John Wiley & Sons, New York 1972).

Fig. 1: The Comoving Distance

Fig. 2: The Luminosity Distance

Fig. 3: The Angular Diameter Distance

Fig. 4: The Age of the Universe (Current Age: 13.7 Myr)

Fig. 5: The Lookback Time

Fig. 6: Redshift/Time: Another view