Light-year

A light-year is a unit of astronomical distance equal to the distance that light travels in one year. In other words, it measures the distance light can travel in vacuum in one year. The value is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles) or about 63,240 astronomical units (AU). The term is often misunderstood as a measure of time, but it is actually a measure of distance. In Hebrew, a light-year is called שנת אור (shnat or). In Spanish, it is known as año luz, in French as année-lumière, in German as Lichtjahr, and in Japanese as 光年 (kōnen). The light-year is most often used when discussing the distances to stars and other objects within our galaxy. The next nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.24 light-years away.