For example, if something would be a few light years wide, would that not mean we would have to use a thing to map it out for that amount of light years in years to get the actual map? Or do they use different methods, like scaling things close to it?
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I know one method to measure the size of stars in binary star system (two stars circling each other). So when stars moving around each other, periodically a star covers the other one and to us both look dimmer at that moment (like solar eclipse). Based on how long the eclipse lasts, their size can be estimated.
For other objects that are large enough, with observation from big telescopes we can derive their apparent size if we know distance from us to them.
But all these are oversimplified. For each object is a different method needed depended on what data we can get from it.
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