Ep. 69 - What's a Parsec? (Pt 4 of 7)

Here we go with part 4! I hope you're learning a lot and that the discussion is prompting you to dig deeper and explore this fascinating field of cosmology.

A parsec (a term used incorrectly by Hans Solo in Star Wars - A New Hope) is a unit of distance, not time. The word comes from the contraction of two other words...parallax and arcsecond. You see, we need a unit larger than a light year to start to understand the magnitude of the universe and the distance between the stars. Indeed, 1 parsec is equal to 3.26 light years!

Questions? Email me at astrostephenson11@gmail.com or Twitter @astrostephenson