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What is Light Years?

A light year is a unit of measurement, not a time. The way light takes in a year; that is, the distance of approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers. So if astronomers say "10 light years away" for a star, they mean that the star is 95 trillion kilometers away.

light years


The sun is 150,000,000 kilometers away from us. Therefore, it takes approximately 500 seconds, ie 8 minutes and 20 seconds, for the light from the Sun to reach the Earth. However, if we look at a more distant object, the M13 star cluster is 25,100 light years away from us. This corresponds to approximately 240,000,000,000,000,000 (240 quadrillion) kilometers, which is actually counted at the bottom of our noses considering the size of the universe. In other words, a light from M13 reaches Earth after 25,100 years. Given that we are currently in 2019 and the species Homo sapiens has been around for an average of 300,000 years, what we mean is better understood.

Scientists prefer to use the light-year criterion, as it is difficult to write and to express such large and plentiful zeros. Because it is easy to define and explain, bile Even the light can only go that way in so many years. ”

Scientists use a unit of measurement called "parsec" among themselves. One parsec equals 3.26 light years. That is, the M13 cluster is at a distance of 25000 / 3.26 = 7668 parsecs, or 7.6 kiloparsecs. The closest galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, is 58 kiloparsecs.

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