Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Scale of Distance - Pluto, (Now) versus Alpha Centauri

Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are! (Job 22:12)

Someone asked me how much further the nearest star is,
compared to the outer planets in our solar system.
(approximately)
The following is a simple calculation about that:

Takes light 4.30 hours to go to Pluto (4.30 light-hours) at 186000 miles /sec.
assuming 31 AU's away. (This in May 2010, sometimes less, will get greater as the next few years go by, for quite a while, because it's going outward on its elliptical orbit)

It just so happens this year that Pluto is the same number of light-hours away, as the
nearest star is in light-years.

1 AU is 92.9 Million Miles. - The radius of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

Takes light 4.3 years to come from Alpha Centauri
There are 24 hours in a day and 365.25 days in a year.
that makes:
8766 hours per year (average of regular years and leap years)

8766 X 4.3 / 4.3 = 8766

Alpha Centauri is 8766 times further away than Pluto is (on average).
1/8766 is .0001141 or .01141 percent.

A light year is 5.879 x 10 to the 12th power miles, or
5.879 thousand billion, or trillion miles.

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