In astronomy, radial velocity is often measured to the first order of approximation by Doppler spectroscopy. The quantity obtained by this method may be called the "barycentric radial-velocity measure" or spectroscopic radial velocity. However, due to relativistic and cosmological effects over the great distances that light typically travels to reach the observer from an astronomical object, this measure cannot be accurately transformed to a geometric radial velocity without additional assumptions about the object and the space between it and the observer. By contrast, "astrometric radial velocity" is determined by astrometric observations (for example, a secular change in the annual parallax).