British spelling.
Astronomers use astronomical numbers.
The most distant galaxy that can be seen at this time with highly advanced telescopes is over 125 sextillion kilometres (78 sextillion miles) away—that's 125,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
It is hard for us to comprehend these vast distances.
That is why the speed of light is used as a measure of distance.
Light travels at 1,080 million kilometres (672 million miles) per hour.
The Sun is approximately 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) away, and light leaving its surface takes just over 8 minutes to reach our planet.
The Sun's nearest star neighbour is Alpha Centauri. Its distance from Earth is over 4.2 light-years. Light travels 9.46 trillion kilometres (5.88 trillion miles) in one year.
A trillion is 1 followed by 12 zeros.
It may seem like a vast distance, but in reality, Alpha Centauri is just a step away when you consider the size of the universe.
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