Why is the distance between stars expressed in light years? What do you understand by the statement that a star is eight light years away from the Earth?

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Solution

Distance between stars are very large in magnitude. Hence a new unit is required so that the value of distance is not too big and is sensible. A light year is defined as the distance travelled by light in one year.
$1 l y = 9.461 \times 10^{12} k m$
$8 l y = 7.57 \times 10^{13} k m$
A star is eight light years away from earth means that light from the star takes 8 years to reach the earth's surface. As shown above, its approximate distance from the earth is $7.6 \times 10^{13} k m$ .

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