parsec

parsec, unit for expressing distances to stars and galaxies, used by professional astronomers. It represents the distance at which the radius of Earth’s orbit subtends an angle of one second of arc. Thus, a star at a distance of one parsec would have a parallax of one second, and the distance of an object in parsecs is the reciprocal of its parallax in seconds of arc. For example, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is part of the Alpha Centauri triple-star system, has a parallax of 0.769 second of arc, and, hence, its distance from the Sun and Earth is 1.30 parsec. One parsec equals 3.26 light-years, which is equivalent to 3.09 × 10¹³ km (1.92 × 10¹³ miles).

In the Milky Way Galaxy, wherein Earth is located, distances to remote stars are measured in terms of kiloparsecs (1 kiloparsec = 1,000 parsecs). The Sun is at a distance of 8.3 kiloparsecs from the centre of the Milky Way system. When dealing with other galaxies or clusters of galaxies, the convenient unit is the megaparsec (1 megaparsec = 1,000,000 parsecs). The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is about 0.76 megaparsec. The farthest galaxies and quasars have distances on the order of about 4,000 megaparsecs, or 13,000,000,000 light-years.