how far in miles is a light year?

Answer 1

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 precisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers.

Answer 2

eSky/glyphweb gives the following explanation:

"Light Year

A unit of interstellar distance, defined as the distance light travels in a period of one year. The speed of light is constant, at about 300,000 km per second: a light year is very nearly 10 million million km. From an Earthbound perspective, this is a vast distance - our entire Solar System, out to the orbit of Pluto, is only one eight-hundredth of a light year across.

Meet the neighbours: these are the star systems that lie within ten light years (or one 'light decade') of the Sun and Solar System. Of these, only Alpha Centauri and Sirius are visible to the naked eye: the others are faint red dwarf stars.

On an interstellar scale, though, a single light year is rather small. It covers less than a quarter of the distance to our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri. Our entire Galaxy is 100,000 light years across or more.

Light Year Conversion Table
Kilometres 9,460,528,404,847
Miles 5,878,499,812,499
Astronomical Units 63,240
Parsecs 0.3066 "

http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/default.htm?http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/concepts/lightyear.html

Answer 3

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 or 5,880,000,000,000 miles.

Why do we use such a big unit of distance? Well, on Earth, a kilometer may be just fine. It is a few hundred kilometers from New York City to Washington, DC; it is a few thousand kilometers from California to Maine. In the Universe, the kilometer is just too small to be useful. For example, the distance to the next nearest big galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 21 quintillion km. 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 we use other units of distance.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

One light year is equal to 5.87849981 × 10(to the power)12 miles

Answer 5

The number of miles light travels in one year (time). so it will be a lot like 300,000km/s X the number of seconds in a year.
Edit: Answer in KM. (1) The imperial system is obsolete now.(2) The speed of light is really aproximate and not gospel as you are told.

Answer 6

5,878,625,373,184 statute miles (based on the Julian year; some use the tropical year, which gives a slightly smaller answer). There are also several kinds of miles (e.g. nautical miles, scottish miles, saxon miles etc.)

or
9,460,730,472,580,800 metres
or approx 9.5 petametres

with the SI system of prefix multipliers, you don't have to go to obscure conversions to get large (or small) numbers into a manageable number of digits.

Click on the link below for a list of SI prefixes.

Answer 7

A light year is the distance light travels in one year. 186,000 miles per second. Do the math if you want to know how many miles per year.

Answer 8

That's like asking 'how many inches in an hour?'
A light year is the DISTANCE that light travels in a year, not a length of time.

Answer 9

Well the speed of light is 186,000,000 miles per second, and the number of seconds in an hour is 3600, so, hang on.

669,600,000,000 miles per hour,

I reckon.

No, hold on,

8766 hours in a year on average so, erm

5,869,713,600,000,000 miles.

Probably

Answer 10

The speed of light in a vacuum is 186,000 miles per second. So in one light year light will travel
186,000x60x60x24x365.25miles. Sorry! I dont have a calculator handy.