Q.What is a light year? Why is it a convenient unit of measurement to calculate the distances?

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Solution

Dear Student,
Light year is a unit of distance. It is used by astronomers to measure distance in space.

Light year is a convenient unit of measuring distance because objects in space are very far away. Therefore, it would be practical and thereby convenient to use such units to calculate distance that are equally large enough.

1 light year= Distance covered by light in one year.
A light year is obtained by multiplying the number of seconds in a year with the number of kms/ miles covered by light in 1 second. That is, 5.88 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion km.

Regards

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