How long does light take to cross that?

Light covers 30 cm in a nanosecond. Grace Hopper used to hand out 30 cm wires to make the point.

Almost exactly a to the Moon

384,400 km is further than 2 of the 7 references on this page.

to Proxima Centauri40,000,000,000,000 kmto Neptune4,500,000,000 kmto the Sun149,597,871 kmto Mars at closest54,600,000 kmto the Moon384,400 kmThat distance384,400 kmonce around the Earth40,075 kmone light-nanosecond0.0003 km

Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.

Every reference on this page, with its size and its ratio to your number
Reference Size Yours ÷ theirs Note
one light-nanosecond 0.0003 km 1,282,188,125× About one foot
once around the Earth 40,075 km 9.59× Light does this 7.5 times a second
to the Moon 384,400 km 1× 1.28 light-seconds
to Mars at closest 54,600,000 km 1/142 About 3 light-minutes
to the Sun 149,597,871 km 1/389 8.3 light-minutes
to Neptune 4,500,000,000 km 1/11,707 4.2 light-hours
to Proxima Centauri 40,000,000,000,000 km 1/104,058,273 4.25 light-years

Worth knowing

  • Light takes 1.28 seconds to reach the Moon, so a conversation with an astronaut there has a 2.6-second round trip.
  • The Sun you can see left it 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago. If it went out, we would not know until then.

Frequently asked

How far is a light-year?

Exactly 9 460 730 472 580 800 metres — an exact number, because both the speed of light and the Julian year are defined values.

Why do astronomers use light-years?

Because the numbers in metres are unusable, and because the unit carries information: looking four light-years out is looking four years back.

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