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Light Year, unit of measure |
| A light-year or lightyear, symbol ly, is a unit of length. A lightyear is the distance light travels in vacuum in one Julian year. A light-year is equal to 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (about 9.461 Pm) or about 5,878,625,373,183.61 statute miles or about 63,241.077 AU (often approximated to 63,240 AU) or about 0.306 601 394 parsecs. The actual, exact length of the light-year depends on the length of the reference year used in the calculation, and there is no wide consensus on the reference to be used. The light-year is often used to measure distances to stars. In astronomy, the preferred unit of measurement for such distances is the parsec, which is defined as the distance at which an object will generate one arcsecond of parallax when the observing object moved one astronomical unit perpendicular to the line of sight to the observer. This is equal to approximately 3.26 light years. The parsec is preferred because it can be more easily derived from, and compared with, observational data. However, outside scientific circles, the term light-year is more widely used. |
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