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The faint yellow translucent sphere represents one light-minute distance from the Sun (very small dot). It is larger than the stars Gamma Orionis and Algol B, but smaller than the radius of Mercury's orbit and the stars Rigel and Aldebaran. Click image for larger view and links to other length scales.

A light-minute (also written light minute) is a unit of length. It is defined as the distance light travels in an absolute vacuum in one minute or 17,987,547,480 metres (~18 Gm). See 10 gigametres for similar lengths. Note that this value is exact, since the metre is actually defined in terms of the light-second.

To give an example, the average distance from the Earth to the Sun (or 1 astronomical unit) is about 8.317 light-minutes.

See also

• Light-day
• Light-hour
• Light-month
• Light-second
• Light-week
• Light-year
• Speed of light
• Orders of magnitude (length)#astronomical
• Orders of magnitude (time)#Seconds

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 28 November 2008, at 18:00.

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