What is a Light Year?
68What is a light year?
The answer is very simple! A light year is a unit of measuring the distance, especially used in astronomy. As the distances between the stars, the galaxies are very huge and it is difficult to explain them in regular units of distances, the concept of light years was introduced.
The light travels about 300,000 Kilo Meters (Exactly saying 299,792.458 Kilo Meters) per second. So when we calculate, we find that it travels 9,500,000,000,000 Kilo Meters (That is about 10Trillions Kilo Meters or 6 Trillion Miles) in a year!This distance is known as One Light Year distance.
The nearest star to us is Proxima Centauri. It is just (!) 4.24 Light Years away from us. It means, the light coming from that star reach to us after 4.24 years. In other words, this distance is about 42 Trillions of Kilo Meters.
It also means that the star Proxima Centauri we see today, is of 4.24 years before.
Who Invented The Concept of Light Year?
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, a German mathematician and astronomer, was the inventor and the first user of the light year concept in 1838.
He was born 22nd July 1784. At the age of 26, he was appointed as director of the Königsberg Observatory by King Frederick William III of Prussia.
Top 10 Nearest Stars
A list of top 10 nearest stars from us.
Proxima Centauri: 4.24 Light Years
Apha Centauri A : 4.36 Light Years
Apha Centauri B: 4.36 Light Years
Barnard's Star: 5.96 Light Years
Wolf 359: 7.78 Light Years
Lalande 21185: 8.29 Light Years
Sirius A: 8.58 Light Years
Sirius B: 8.58 Light Years
Luyten 726-8 A: 8.72 Light Years
Luyten 726-8 B: 8.72 Light Years
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CommentsLoading...
And the other interstellar unit of measure is also based upon the orbit of the Earth: parsec (pc).
1 pc = ~3.26 light years
The problem is that when you get to these stars, what are you going to do there?
In my opinion,the universe is an overkill, at least for us on Earth.
The limiting factor is human nature. No matter where we go we would do the same thing that we have down on Earth, since our existence began.
lone77star
3.26 is pretty close to the value of Pi, also in the circle area.
Just an association, no real value.
lone77star,
Thank you for adding some information.
Really puts things into perspective. The universe is so mysterious and vast it's absolutely mind boggling. Thank you for an awesome hub jainismus. Voted up, shared, awesome, and interesting :)
In other words we can say that the measurement of time in years which light takes to reach earth from other distant celestial bodies depends on the distance traveled by light per year...i.e directly proportional to it..
Great info Jain ...
MarleneWheeler Level 1 Commenter 3 months ago
Beam me up Scotty!