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The largest unit for expressing distances across space at that time was the astronomical unit, equal to the radius of the Earth's orbit at 150 million kilometres (93 million miles). In those terms, trigonometric calculations based on 61 Cygni's parallax of 0.314 arcseconds, showed the distance to the star to be 660 000 astronomical units (9.9 ...
Distance light travels in one Julian year (365.25 days) — Oort cloud: 75 000: ± 25 000: Distance of the outer limit of Oort cloud from the Sun (estimated, corresponds to 1.2 light-years) — Parsec: 206 265 — One parsec. The parsec is defined in terms of the astronomical unit, is used to measure distances beyond the scope of the Solar ...
The kilometre (SI symbol: km) is a unit of length in the metric system equal to 1 000 meters (10 3 m). To help compare different orders of magnitude , this section lists lengths between 1 kilometer and 10 kilometers (10 3 and 10 4 meters ).
Earth radius R 🜨 ≈ 6,371 km [9] Lunar distance LD ≈ 384 402 km. [10] Average distance between the center of Earth and the center of the Moon. astronomical unit au. Defined as 149 597 870 700 m. [11] Approximately the distance between the Earth and Sun. light-year ly ≈ 9 460 730 472 580.8 km. The distance that light travels in a vacuum ...
[nb 1] Earth's orbital speed averages 29.78 km/s (19 mi/s; 107,208 km/h; 66,616 mph), which is fast enough to cover the planet's diameter in 7 minutes and the distance to the Moon in 4 hours. [3] The point towards which the Earth in its solar orbit is directed at any given instant is known as the "apex of the Earth's way". [4] [5]
The actual distance between the Moon and Earth can change as quickly as 75 meters per second, [20] or more than 1,000 km (620 mi) in just 6 hours, due to its non-circular orbit. [21] There are other effects that also influence the lunar distance.
One astronomical unit (about 150 million kilometres; 93 million miles) is defined as the mean distance between the centers of the Sun and the Earth. The instantaneous distance varies by about ± 2.5 million kilometres (1.6 million miles) as Earth moves from perihelion around 3 January to aphelion around 4 July. [36]
Earth radius (denoted as R 🜨 or R E) is the distance from the center of Earth to a point on or near its surface. Approximating the figure of Earth by an Earth spheroid (an oblate ellipsoid), the radius ranges from a maximum (equatorial radius, denoted a) of nearly 6,378 km (3,963 mi) to a minimum (polar radius, denoted b) of nearly 6,357 km (3,950 mi).