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New low-mass galaxy discovered

Astronomers report the discovery of a new galaxy in the constellation Corvus. The newfound galaxy, which received designation Corvus A, has a relatively low mass, is gas-rich and isolated. The discovery was presented in a ...

New ultra-hot Neptune-sized exoplanet discovered

Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new exoplanet. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-3261b, is nearly the size of Neptune and its equilibrium ...

Two additional components of the CC Com system found

Using the TÜBİTAK National Observatory (TUG) and NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have investigated a short-period contact binary known as CC Com. As a result, they detected two additional ...

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.

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