light years

     

A light-year or light year (symbol: ly) is a unit of length, equal to just uner ten trillion kilometres. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (which is the body which has the jurisdictional authority to promulgate the definition), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year.

Trivia about light years

  • Sirius is pretty close--just 8.6 of these from Earth
  • Alpha Centauri is 4.35 of these away from us
  • The distance between stars is so vast, it's measured in these "years"
  • A gamma ray burst that was briefly visible to the naked eye in 2008 took place at a distance of 7.5 billion these

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