News tagged with light years
Newfound exoplanet may turn to dust
Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a ...
May 18, 2012 |
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Gaseous ring around young star raises questions
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have detected a mysterious ring of carbon monoxide gas around the young star V1052 Cen, which is about 700 light years away in the southern constellation Centaurus. The ring is ...
Jan 19, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (12) |
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Astronomers discover biggest black holes ever (Update)
University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered the largest black holes to date two monsters with masses equivalent to 10 billion suns that are threatening to consume anything, even light, ...
Dec 05, 2011 |
4.8 / 5 (24) |
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Origin of dinosaur-killing asteroid remains a mystery
(PhysOrg.com) -- Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Sep 20, 2011 |
4.9 / 5 (9) |
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Chandra finds nearest pair of supermassive black holes
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. At a distance of 160 million light ...
Aug 31, 2011 |
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Stellar eclipse gives glimpse of exoplanet
A group of astronomers led by an MIT professor has spotted an exoplanetary eclipse of a star only 40 light years away — right around the corner, astronomically speaking — revealing a "super-Earth."
Jul 19, 2011 |
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Herschel Space Observatory discovers source of cosmic dust in a stellar explosion
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESA's Herschel Space Observatory is helping unravel the mystery of where cosmic dust comes from. Thanks to the resolution and sensitivity of Herschel, astronomers have been able to detect ...
Jul 07, 2011 |
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Astronomers discover that galaxies are either asleep or awake
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have probed into the distant universe and discovered that galaxies display one of two distinct behaviors: they are either awake or asleep, actively forming stars or are not forming ...
Jun 21, 2011 |
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New candidate for most distant object in universe
(PhysOrg.com) -- A gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009 has been newly unveiled as a candidate for the most distant object in the universe. At an estimated distance of 13.14 billion ...
May 25, 2011 |
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How often do giant black holes become hyperactive?
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory tells scientists how often the biggest black holes have been active over the last few billion years. This discovery clarifies how supermassive ...
Dec 20, 2010 |
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Study says solar systems like ours may be common
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nearly one in four stars like the sun could have Earth-size planets, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study of nearby solar-mass stars.
Oct 28, 2010 |
4.8 / 5 (23) |
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Black hole blows big bubble
Combining observations made with ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope, astronomers have uncovered the most powerful pair of jets ever seen from a stellar black hole. This object, also ...
Jul 07, 2010 |
4.8 / 5 (24) |
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Discovery that quasars don't show time dilation mystifies astronomers
(PhysOrg.com) -- The phenomenon of time dilation is a strange yet experimentally confirmed effect of relativity theory. One of its implications is that events occurring in distant parts of the universe should ...
Apr 09, 2010 |
4.7 / 5 (101) |
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Massive white dwarf in our galaxy may go supernova
(PhysOrg.com) -- A massive white dwarf star in our galaxy may become a supernova several million years from now, and could damage the Earth and possibly destroy life on Earth.
Jan 07, 2010 |
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Suzaku snaps first complete X-ray view of a galaxy cluster
The joint Japan-U.S. Suzaku mission is providing new insight into how assemblages of thousands of galaxies pull themselves together. For the first time, Suzaku has detected X-ray-emitting gas at a cluster's ...
May 28, 2009 |
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Light-year
A light-year or light year (symbol: ly) is a unit of length, equal to just under 1013 kilometres. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year.
The light-year is often used to measure distances to stars and other distances on a galactic scale, especially in non-specialist and popular science publications. The preferred unit in astrometry is the parsec, because it can be more easily derived from, and compared with, observational data. The parsec is defined as the distance at which an object will appear to move one arcsecond of parallax when the observer moves one astronomical unit perpendicular to the line of sight to the observer, and is equal to approximately 3.26 light-years.
The related unit of the light-month, roughly one-twelfth of a light-year, is also used occasionally for approximate measures.
For more information about Light-year, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
