What is another unit besides light years to measure distance in space?

Answer 1

One light year is the distance that light travels in one year.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, or 300,000 km per second.

There are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. There are 24 hours in a day and a year is 365.25 days long.

So, multiply 186,000 times 60 times 60 times 24 times 365.25. That's the number of miles in a light-year.

Answer 2

Another unit to measure distance in space is the astronomical unit (AU), which is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, approximately 93 million miles. This unit is often used within our solar system.

Answer 3

A light-year is a unit of length, or distance. It is the distance light travels in a year. (People sometimes confuse this, believing a light-year to be a unit of time.) A light-year is approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers.

Answer 4

For shorter distances, out to a few hundred light years or so, we can measure the distance with trigonometry and parallax. Look at the object today, and compare the background stars. Look at it again in 6 months (when the Earth is on the opposite side of its orbit, 186,000,000 miles away) and look at it again. If the difference in angle is one second of arc, then the distance to the object is "one parallax-second of arc" or one "par-sec" - or "parsec". This distance, one parsec, is approximately equal to 3.26 light-years.

For really distant objects, there is no way to measure the parallax - the angle is too small to measure with a baseline as small as the Earth's orbit. One of the reasons why we might want to launch a few space telescopes into very distant orbits - say, beyond Neptune - would be to give us a bigger trigonometric baseline to use for calculating distances based on parallax.

Beyond about 1000 light years, everything is guesswork based on the apparent magnitudes of stars; the more distant, the dimmer the star appears to be. But is it dim because it is small, or dim because it is far away? There is a class of stars known as "Cephid Variable Stars" which vary in their brightness - and the time from peak to peak of their brightness is related to their brightness!

Answer 5

anything astronomy lol. a light year is a distance that light travels in one year through open space that equals 5,865,696,000,000 mi/yr or 1 light year for measuring purposes which is 186,000 mi/sec

Answer 6

Scientists measure the distances in space in light-years. A light-year is the distance light-travels in 365 days. A light year is about 5,880 billion miles. The closest star to Earth is 4.3 light-years. This means that the light from the star took 4.3 years to reach Earth.

Answer 7

It's a unit of 'length' ... the distance light travels through vacuum in one year.

9,460,730,473,000 kilometers (rounded)

5,878,625,373,000 miles (rounded)

The nearest star outside of our solar system is about 4.2 light years distant from us,

which also means that we see it as it was about 4.2 years ago.

The nearest galaxy outside of our Milky Way galaxy is about 2.5 million light years distant,

which also means that we see it as it was about 2.5 million years ago.

Answer 8

A light year is the distance light travels in one earth year

eg c * 3.16x10^7 = 9.46 x 10^15 m

c is the speed of light

3.16 x 10^7 is the number of seconds in one year

1 light-year = 9460730472580800 m (exactly) ≈ 5878625 million miles≈ 63241.1 astronomical units≈ 0.306601 parsecs

The figures above are based on a Julian year (not Gregorian year) of exactly 365.25 days (each of exactly 86400 SI seconds, totalling 31557600 seconds) and a defined speed of light of 299792458 m/s.

Answer 9

One light-year is the distance that light will travel in one year. Light travels at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles per second, or 300,000 km per second.

There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365.26 days in a year. Just multiply all of those numbers together.

Answer 10

When measuring distances outside of the solar system, there are two main units used. The first is the light-year, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth year (one light-year equals 9,460,000,000,000km). The second is the parsec, which is equal to 3.2616 light years or 30,857,000,000,000 km.