Light-year Light-year The light-year is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and measures about 9.46 trillion kilometres or 5.88 trillion miles. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days). Because it includes the word "year", the term light-year is sometimes misinterpreted as a unit of time. The light-year is most often used when expressing distances to stars and other distances on a galactic scale, especially in nonspecialist and popular science publications. The unit most commonly used in professional astrometry is the parsec
26 Miles (Santa Catalina) "Forty kilometres in a leaky old boat . . .", a rare mention of a metric unit in American popular music, and a tolerably accurate conversion (26 miles = 41.8 km). 26 Miles (Santa Catalina) "26 Miles (Santa Catalina)" is a popular song by the 1950s and 1960s pop band The Four Preps. It reached number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and number six on the "Billboard" R&B chart in 1958. The song sold over a million copies and the group appeared on several television shows, including "The Gisele MacKenzie Show" (March 15, 1958) and "The Ed Sullivan Show".