Previous Year Question

A light-year is a unit of distance, not of time or speed. It is particularly used to express the enormous distances between stars and other astronomical objects. NASA defines a light-year as the distance travelled by light in one year.

One light-year is approximately 9.46 × 10¹² kilometres, or 9.46 × 10¹⁵ metres.

Therefore, despite the word “year” in its name, a light-year is a unit used for measuring astronomical distance.