What unit would you use to give the distance between the sun and another star?
2 Answers
Light years
Explanation:
The most common unit for interstellar distances is the light year, which is the distance traveled by light in one year.
Remember that light travels at about 186 thousand miles each second (300 thousand kilometers each second), so when you multiply that by the approximately 31536000 second in one year (60 seconds in a minute times 60 minutes in an hour times 24 hours in a day times 365 days in a year), you get 5,878,625,000,000 miles (5.87 trillion miles or 9.461 trillion kilometers).
Light year, parsec or astronomical unit.
Explanation:
Light year has already been explained nicely by Ricardo A.
1 Parsec = 3.26 light years
1 Astronomical unit(AU) is the mean distance between the sun and the earth, which is approximately 149.6 million kilometres.
It is the mean distance because earth has an elliptical orbit and has no fixed distance from the sun, as it is always changing. The farthest point is called aphileon, while the closest point is called the perihelion.
