Light Year Converter
Convert light years to other distance units like miles and kilometers.
Conversion Results
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Convert Light-Years to Other Distance Units
Our Light-Year Converter helps you translate the vast distances of space into more familiar units like miles and kilometers, and other astronomical units like parsecs.
What is a Light-Year Converter?
A Light-Year Converter is a scientific tool that translates the astronomical unit of a light-year into other units of distance. A light-year represents the distance light travels in one year, an immense distance used to measure the space between stars and galaxies. This calculator makes it easy to understand this scale by converting it to other units, from kilometers to parsecs.
How It Works: Conversion Factors
The calculator uses standard astronomical conversion factors based on the speed of light.
1 Light-Year ≈ 9.461 trillion kilometers
1 Light-Year ≈ 5.879 trillion miles
1 Parsec ≈ 3.26 Light-Years
Frequently Asked Questions
How far is a light-year?
A light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year. This is approximately 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers. It's a unit of distance, not time.
What is the closest star to Earth?
Besides our Sun, the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is about 4.24 light-years away.
How do you calculate a light-year?
A light-year is calculated by multiplying the speed of light (approximately 299,792 kilometers per second) by the number of seconds in one year (31,536,000).
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