Converting light years into astronomical units

Math and Physics Programming

Started by PixelOp March 29, 2005 11:23 PM

4 comments, last by Raymond_Porter420 19 years ago

103

Author

March 29, 2005 11:23 PM

I'm terribly bad at math and I was wondering if anyone could help me with this conversion. How do I convert light years into astronomical units? I tried searching on Google numerous times but all I get is mc = square..etc... For reference: An astronomical unit is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun (about 150,000,000 km or 93,000,000 miles) and a light year is the distance light travels in a year (about 10 trillion kilometers or 6 trillion miles). (The nearest star after the Sun is about 4.2 light years away.) Use type double (as in Listing 2.4) and this conversion factor: 1 light year = 63240 astronomical units Thanks in advance!

-PixelOp

Drew_Benton

1,865

March 29, 2005 11:26 PM

Maybe I'm mistaken....but if you know how many astronomical units are in a light year, what are you trying to convert? Oh yea and you should read the Forum FAQ

Dave Hunt

4,872

March 29, 2005 11:28 PM

That looks suspiciously like a homework assignment.

frostburn

380

March 29, 2005 11:29 PM

This looks suspiciously like homework ("as in Listing 2.4")

But... The math is simple enough (practically 1st grade), but I'm not going to type out the source-code..

lenghtAU = lengthLY * 63240