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A light year is the distance that light (travelling at approximately 300,000 km/second in a vacuum) goes in one year. It's about 9.46 trillion kilometers. The light year is a convenient unit for distance in outer space because stars are extremely far apart in relation to any measurement on our planet. For example, the nearest star other than our sun is about 4.34 light years, or about 41,000,000,000,000 kilometers.

It is important to remember that a light year is not a unit of time. It is a unit of distance.

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A unit that is commonly used in astronomy is the light-year - the distance light travels in a year.


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