Light year

The light year (symbol: ly) is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year. Although one might think that one year is defined as the time for the Earth to complete one revolution of its orbit of the Sun, there are still several definitions depending on the frame of reference. According to the recommendations of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the Julian year, which has a length of 365.25 days or 31,557,600 seconds, shall be used.

The light year is a unit of distance larger than an astronomical unit (AU). It is commonly used to measure interstellar distances, where other units of measure are too small. It is rarely used in interplanetary distances, because it is too large to be useful.

Also used are the light second, light minute, light hour, light day, light week and light month. As opposed to the light year, whose value more or less depends on the definition of year, the values of all these units are defined exactly.

Numerical value

• velocity of light in vacuum: 299,792,458 m/s (meters/second)
• one Julian year = 365.25 days = 31,557,600 s
• 1 ly = 9,460,730,472,580,800 m

Comparison to other Units

• 1 parsec = 3.2616 ly
• 1 AU = 0.0000158 ly = 15.8×10^-6 ly
• 1 ly = 0.30660 parsecs
• 1 ly = 63,241 AU
• 1 ly = 5,878,625,373,183.607 mi = 5.878625 * 10¹² mi
• 1 ly = 9,460,730,472,580.800 km = 9.4607304 * 10¹² km
• 1 ly = 10,346,380,656,803,149.606 yd = 10.346381 * 10¹⁵ yd
• 1 ly = 31,039,141,970,409,448.818 ft = 31.039142 * 10¹⁵ ft

Distances in light-years (or other light-time units)

• The maximum distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 1.3 light seconds.
• The maximum distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 499 light seconds or 8.3 light minutes.
• The diameter of our Solar System is about 150 light hours or about 6 light days.
• The hypothetical Oort cloud is approximately 2 light years in diameter.
• The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is a distance of about 4.2 light years from the Sun.
• The diameter of our Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 light years.
• The distance to the naked-eye Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.4 to 2.7 million light years.