light years notes
TRANSCRIPT
To get an idea of how fast
this is. . . light can travel
about seven times around
Earth in one second!
One light year is approximately 5.880
trillion miles or 9.5 trillion km.
The symbol for light year is “ly”.
Light years are used to
measure the vast distances
in space.
In the universe, the kilometer
measure is too small to use.
Every time you look at
objects in the night sky or
the Sun, the light from
that object is old. You are
looking at history.
It takes eight light minutes for light leaving the Sun to reach the Earth.
To put this in perspective, if you could drive from the surface of the Sun to the surface of the Earth, it would take you 180 years driving nonstop at 60 mph.