how big is our solar system in light years
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What is the distance, in light years, across our solar system? The solar system itself is around 1.2 light years wide on the average. In AU, this is a huge number (one AU are only about 8.5 lightminutes): 75888 AU The heliopause, on the other hand, is only about 200 AU across. Lot's of stuff, which is still orbiting the sun (The Oort cloud) is outside the heliopause.
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General Astronomy/Print version A light-second is the distance light travels in one second, or 7.5 times the distance around Earth’s equator. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. How far is that? Multiply the number of seconds in one year by the number of miles or kilometers that light travels in one second, and there you have it: one light-year. It’s about 5.88 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
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What is a light-year? So light from a star at one end of our galaxy takes 20 times longer than all of recorded history to get to the other end. Astronomers measure the distance to the Andromeda galaxy using light-years. One light-year equals about 6 trillion miles. This galaxy is over 2 million light-years from Earth.
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Size of the Solar System It takes light 1 and 1/2 seconds to go from the Earth to the Moon, 240,000 miles. It takes 8 minutes for the light of the Sun to reach us. It takes 5 light-hours (meaning the distance light travels in 5 hours) for light to get out to Pluto from the Earth. When we leave our solar system, distances get very large. The nearest star, named Proxima Centauri, is over 4 light-years away.
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- We - as in the Solar System, are located about 25,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy and about 25,000 light years from the edge. The Sun and the rest of the Solar System are close to the inner rim of the galaxy's Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff inside the Local Bubble, and in the Gould Belt.
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- He did this by relating the light-year to the astronomical unit – the Earth-sun distance. One astronomical unit equals about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). Another way of looking at it: the astronomical unit is a bit more than 8 light-minutes in distance.
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Astronomy Final Flashcards The sun is about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is about 80,000 to 120,000 light-years across (and less than 7,000 light-years thick). We are located on on one of its spiral arms, out towards the edge.
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- A light-year is equal to 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (about 9.461 Pm; 5,878,625,373,183.61 statute miles; about 63,240 astronomical units or about 0.3066 parsecs.
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VY Canis Majoris compared to Earth Approximately 4.900 light years from earth you can find VY Canis Majoris, assuming you’re going the right way. That’s rather far to say the least. To start with the basics, a light year is the distance light can travel in a year.Y Canis Majoris is a mere 96,296 times bigger than Earth. I’d like to illustrate it, but Earth would be near to invisible on most comparisons. So therefore I’d like to use a more common picture that compared VY to our sun.
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- So in one week, light will travel a little more than 1.8 x 1011 km., or about 112.…66 billion miles. (Think of the frequent flier points on that flight!) To put that in perspective, the average distance from the Earth to the sun is defined as an astronomical unit (AU).
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- In any case, it’s clear a light-year is a vast expanse. Over a year, light travels 5.87849981 x 10 12 miles (roughly 9.4605284 x 10 12 kilometers.) Written out, that’s 5,878,499,810,000 miles or 9,460,528,400,000 kilometers.
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What is a light-year? Astronomers measure the distance to the Andromeda galaxy using light-years. One light-year equals about 6 trillion miles. This galaxy is over 2 million light-years from Earth. Image credit: Adam Evans via Wikipedia
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- Antares is a red supergiant. It is approximately 800 times larger than our own Sun. The Sun has a diameter of 1.392 million kilometers so Antares is approximately 1.113 bill … ion kilometers. This means that about 512 million Suns would fit inside Antares. Light would take about 1 hour to cover this distance.
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- 1 light-year = 63240 AU (astronomical units) Just for information, 1 light-year is equivalent to the distance travelled by light in 1 year moving in a vacuum. 1 light-year is about 9.4607 * 1015 metres. 1 astronomical unit (AU) is equivalent to the average radius of the Earth's orbit. 1 AU is about 1.4960 * 1011 metres. Simple arithmetic calculation yields the answer that 1 light-year = 63240 AU to a good approximation.
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StarChild Question of the Month for March 2000 That's 21,000,000,000,000,000,000 km. This is a number so large that it becomes hard to write and hard to interpret. So astronomers use other units of distance. In our solar system, we tend to describe distances in terms of the Astronomical Unit (AU). The AU is defined as the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. It is approximately 150 million km (93 million miles). Mercury can be said to be about 1/3 of an AU from the Sun and Pluto averages about 40 AU from the Sun.
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- A light-year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers (km) each second. So in one year, it can travel about 10 trillion km. More p recisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers.
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The Sun - how far? how big? Size of the Sun as compared to Earth. The Sun has a diameter of about 1,392,000 km (~865,000 miles). Earth's diameter is 12,742 km (7,917.5 miles). The diameter of the Sun is thus 109 times as great as the Earth's diameter.In other words, you could line up 109 Earths across the face of the Sun. The Sun is about 109 times as large as Earth, in terms of diameter.This picture shows the Sun (with some sunspots), Jupiter, and Earth to scale. (Click image to enlarge) Credit: Original artwork by Randy Russell.he volume of a sphere varies as the cube of the sphere's diameter. Since the Sun's diameter is more than 100 times as large as the Earth's, the volume of the Sun is more than a million times the Earth's volume. To be more precise, the Sun's volume is roughly 1,304,000 times as great as Earth's.
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- That's why the sun, which is a million times the size of the Earth, looks so small. It would take the Space Shuttle seven months to fly there. Credit: SOHO-ESA & NASA. When we leave the solar system, we find our star and its planets are just one small part of the Milky Way galaxy.The Milky Way is a huge city of stars, so big that even at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to travel across it.All the stars in the night sky, including our Sun, are just some of the residents of this galaxy, along with millions of other stars too faint to be seen.o on the full exploration of the size of our universe at: How big is our universe? Beautiful images and straight-forward methods and ideas take you from our solar system, into the realm of the stars, the galaxies and finally into the vast panorama of the observable universe.
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General Astronomy/Print version The Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 Light Years across. Each light year is about 63,241 Astronomical Units. An Astronomical unit is the average distance between the Sun and … the Earth, or about 93 million miles. Based on that math we form an equation.100,000x63,241=6,324,100,000 Astronomical units Thats exactly 5.881413 × 1017 or 588,141,200,000,000,000 miles.he Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 Light Years across. Each light year is about 63,241 Astronomical Units. An Astronomical unit is the average distance between the Sun and … the Earth, or about 93 million miles. Based on that math we form an equation.
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- A good approximation would be: 1 light-year = 63240 AU (astronomical units) Just for information, 1 light-year is equivalent to the distance travelled by light in 1 year moving in a vacuum. 1 light-year is about 9.4607 * 1015 metres. 1 astronomical unit (AU) is equivalent to the average radius of the Earth's orbit. 1 AU is about 1.4960 * 1011 metres.
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- On a galactic scale, Vega and Sirius are our next-door neighbors. Astronomers estimate that our solar system resides some 27,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and that the circumference of the Sun's orbit is somewhere around 150,000 light-years.ven though our Sun travels at the breakneck speed of 225 kilometers (140 miles) per second, our solar system takes some 225 million years to complete one revolution around the galaxy!
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How Are Distances in Space Measured? Instead of trying to measure these vast distances in kilometers or AU units, you can specify them in light years. A light year -- 9,334,200,000,000 km (5,800,000,000,000 miles) -- is the distance light travels in one year. That makes Proxima Centauri's distance in light years 4.22.ts value is the average distance from Earth to the sun, or 149,600,000 kilometers (92,584,307 miles). Instead of expressing Pluto's distance in kilometers, you can simply say that it's 39.54 AU away.
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General Chemistry/Print version 300 000 kilometers, which equals seven times around the Earth. Let's call this distance one light second. We can use this as a ruler to measure distances in space. Beyond the Sun and its planets we need a longer ruler, which is the distance light travels in one year. This is called a light year - it is 32 million times longer than a light second. Multiplying a light second by the number of seconds in a year, we can answer the question: How far is a light year? 10 trillion kilometers (or more exactly, 9.5 x 1012 km).
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The Solar System Distances in the solar system are commonly measured in Astronomical Units (AU). An AU is simply the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Because the Earth's orbit around the Sun is an ellipse, the Earth is not always the same distance from the Sun. An AU is equal to ~149,600,000 km.
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JUST THE FACTS Most objects in space are so far away, that using a relatively small unit of distance, such as an astronomical unit, is not practical. Instead, astronomers measure distances to objects which are outside our solar system in light-years.A light-year (ly) is the distance that light can travel in one year in a vacuum (empty space).he speed of light is about 186,000 miles or 300,000 kilometers per second. So, in one year light travels a distance of about 5,880,000,000,000 miles or 9,460,000,000,000 kilometers or 63,240 A.U.. This distance is 1 light-year.
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How Big is the Sun? | Size of the Sun You could line up 109 Earths across the face of the sun. The sun's circumference is about 2,713,406 miles (4,366,813 km). It may be the biggest thing in this neighborhood, but the sun is just average compared to other stars. Betelgeuse, a red giant, is about 700 times bigger than the sun and about 14,000 times brighter.