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A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr[3]), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (Scientific notation: 9.4607304725808 × 10 12 km), which is approximately 5.88 trillion mi.
Comoving distance and proper distance. Comoving distance is the distance between two points measured along a path defined at the present cosmological time. For objects moving with the Hubble flow, it is deemed to remain constant in time. The comoving distance from an observer to a distant object (e.g. galaxy) can be computed by the following ...
The closer distance was derived from parallax measurements of around 33 mas. [54] The larger distance derives from the assumption of a very bright absolute magnitude for Canopus. [55] Hipparcos established Canopus as being 310 light-years (95 parsecs) from the Solar System; this is based on its 2007 parallax measurement of 10.43 ± 0.53 mas. [2]
3.261 56 ly. The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to 3.26 light-years or 206,265 astronomical units (AU), i.e. 30.9 trillion kilometres (19.2 trillion miles). [a] The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry ...
A light-year is the distance light travels in one Julian year, around 9461 billion kilometres, 5879 billion miles, or 0.3066 parsecs. In round figures, a light year is nearly 10 trillion kilometres or nearly 6 trillion miles. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth after the Sun, is around 4.2 light-years away. [89]
The centimetre (SI symbol: cm) is a unit of length in the metric system equal to 10−2 metres ( 1 100 m = 0.01 m). To help compare different orders of magnitude, this section lists lengths between 10 −2 m and 10 −1 m (1 cm and 1 dm). 1 cm – 10 millimetres. 1 cm – 0.39 inches. 1 cm – edge of a square of area 1 cm 2.
The light-second is a unit of length useful in astronomy, telecommunications and relativistic physics. It is defined as the distance that light travels in free space in one second, and is equal to exactly 299 792 458 m (approximately 983 571 055 ft or 186 282 mi). Just as the second forms the basis for other units of time, the light-second can ...
An illustration of light sources from magnitude 1 to 3.5, in 0.5 increments. In astronomy, magnitude is a measure of the brightness of an object, usually in a defined passband. An imprecise but systematic determination of the magnitude of objects was introduced in ancient times by Hipparchus. Magnitude values do not have a unit.