I have many questions and am looking for answers. help please.

[parky]

How are you all. I'm very new to astronomy and still learning basic terminology. Can anyone please tell me how many miles / km there are to 1au. Just trying to understand better the distances objects are from us. many thanks.

[saturn5]

An a.u, is 93 million miles,the distance the sun is from us or if your into metric 149.5 million kilometers or there abouts

[Ant]

Welcome to SGL Parky

The unit AU is not really much use once you leave the solar system. Once you start talking about even the nearest star "Light Year" or "parsec" tend to be the term in favour.

1 x AU = 93 million Miles

1 x Light Year = 5,865,696 Million Miles (or 63072 AU's)

1 x Parsec = 3.2616 Light Years.

Earth - Moon = 1.5 light Seconds

Earth - Sun = 8 Light Minutes

Sun - Nearest Star = 4.2 Light Years

Sun - M31 = 2,200,000 Light Years

Just to give you a rough idea.

So to be honest distances become almost acedemic as it's hard to visualise them...

Ant

[barkis]

The answer Ant supplied are related to time and the speed of light itself When he gave the distance to the galaxy M31 in Andromeda, a galaxy that can be seen with the naked eye as a faint patch of light, as 2.2 million light years, it means the light you see at any time you look at it, has taken that many years to reach your eyes. And as said, light speed is 186,000 miles per second, which gives an indication of the vast distances involved.

Ron.

[themos]

To fill the gaps:

Distance of Sun to globular clusters in the galaxy = 12,000 - 300,000 light years

[FLO]

Check this out, it works for me 8)

http://theguidescope.com/2007/10/15/a-sense-of-scale/

[parky]

Thanks much guys. That helps me out. Still a lot for my tiny brain to comprehend, but i'll try. ha ha. Much Appreciated