light-year
- noun
- /ˈlaɪtˌjɪr/
- Specialized
- The nearest star is about 4.2 light-years away from Earth.
- light-years away
- million light-years
- billion light-years
Like the sun is millions of light years away, right?
- Like the sun is millions of light years away, right?
- So inches become miles become light years before you know it.
- How many meters, kilometers, light years are there between point A and point B.
- And the thing that's been lensed here that's making this bright spot is smaller than two light years across.
- The universe is not homogeneous on small scales, and small scales means, you know, hundreds of millions of light years.
- Like you said, hundreds of light years, like how many stars are close by at like what?
Examples
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This intelligent, sentient being... travelled untold light years to come and visit our planet.
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We now know that the Milky Way Galaxy is about 70,000 light-years in diameter.
Academic text (1991) -
I guess it's not going to be more than a few light years across.
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I could take one of them and just let it fly off to another star system light years away, right?
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It's 11 light years away.
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This rose galaxy is actually two million light years away from the planet Earth.
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It's 75 million light years away.
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It's 277.5 light years from here.
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It also suggested that a habitable planet, like Earth, should exist just a few hundred light years away.
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A star sixteen light-years away, which humanity would name Aeolus, was about to die.
Fiction book (2000)
Synonyms
The distance light travels in one year in space, about 9.46 trillion kilometers
How Long
- Specialized
- US
- Specialized
- US
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Light-year comes from joining light and year, so it literally means the distance light travels in one 'year'. That's why astronomers use light-year to measure very large distances in space.