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Measuring Space
We are 93 million miles from the sun, but it's much simpler to say we're one astronomical unit (AU) from the sun. In our solar system, the distance from the sun to the other planets can be measured in astronomical units as well:
Our universe is huge, larger than most of us can even imagine.
If we want to move beyond our "neighborhood," our nearest neighboring galaxy is Andromeda. At 2.2 million light years, it's the most distant object that we can see without a telescope, and the only object outside our own galaxy in the universe.
This works great within our own solar system, but as we move through our galaxy, distances grow ever farther apart. That's why we created a unit of measure based on the distance that light travels in a year. We call these units "light years," of course. A light year is 6 trillion miles.
Mercury .38 AUs, Venus .72 AUs, Mars 1.52 AUs, Jupiter 5.2 AUs, Saturn 9.54 AUs, Uranus 19.218 AUs, Neptune 30.06 AUs, and Pluto 39.5 AUs.
2.2 million light years is a huge distance, but merely a drop in the bucket to the size of our universe. In order to measure larger distances, the parsec (Paralax Second) was invented. A parsec is approximately 3.258 light years. Along with the parsec, larger distances are measured in kiloparsecs (thousand parsecs) and megaparsecs (million parsecs).
