The light takes 8 minutes to reach earth from the sun and the nearest star is 4.7 lightyears from ?

Question

he sun. whats the distance from the sun to the nearest star in astronomical units solution?

Answer 1

I have no idea why anyone would want to calculate the distance to stars in AU, but here's how you would come up with the answer.

8 light minutes = 93 million miles = 1 AU

8 light minutes (multiplied by what) = 4.7 light years

(you will need to convert years into minutes before you can get the answer, but that's the basics of it.)

<edit>

In response to the answerer below me (sorry, I have no idea how I'm suppossed to type your name), why did you bother with the conversion from years to months to days?  Wouldn't going straight from years to days be slightly more accurate that your values of (12 months x 30 days = 360 days per years, no?). Also, it appears you have converted hours to minutes incorrectly, there are 60 minutes per hour, not 24.  (Yeah, I bothered to look at that).

<edit  2>

No harm done, I think you corrected it before anyone else looked at it!

Answer 2

4.7 years is about 2472000 (a little under two and a half million) minutes. Divide that by eight and you get roughly 309000 (three hundred and nine thousand) astronomical units.

This is based on your given units. In the real world, the Earth averages more than eight light minutes away from the Sun, and Proxima Centauri is about 4.2 light years away. The distance between the Sun and Proxima Centauri is therefore about 265600 astronomical units.

Answer 3

PLEASE RE-READ I MADE MISTAKES!

First, you need to convert 4.7 years into minutes. Lets call it x.

Lets call the amount of AU's y

You can figure out how to do this problem by using proportions.

8 LM / 1 AU = x / y

Here's how to convert years into minutes:

4.7 x 12 = 56.4 months

56.4 x 30 = 1692 days

1692 x 24 = 40,608 hours

40,608 x 60 =2,436,480 minutes

so plug that value into the proportion-

8 LM / 1 AU = x / y

plug in 2,436,480 into x-

8 / 1 = 974,592 / y

So now you need to divide 2,436,480 by 8.

304, 560 AU.

Why you would want to convert this, I have no idea.

EDIT:Oh, I'm sorry. I'm tired and clearly wasn't thinking straight. I corrected it, and your right I should have just multiplied it by 365.25. Your right, I'm sorry. Normally I would get this right but I was a bit preocupied at the time. Thanks so much for pointing out my error, I appreciate it.

Answer 4

4.7 AU X 365.25 days per year  X 24 hours per day X 60 minutes per hour / 8 minutes per au