Speed of light they appeared 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than a billion years old. The fact that more distant objects appear to be younger, due to the finite speed of light, allows astronomers to infer the evolution of stars, of galaxies, and of the universe itself. Astronomical distances are sometimes expressed in light-years, especially in popular science publications and media. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, around 9461 billion kilometres, 5879 billion miles, or 0.3066 parsecs. In round figures, a light year is nearly 10 trillion kilometres or nearly 6 trillion miles. Proxima Centauri,
26 Andromedae 26 Andromedae 26 Andromedae, abbreviated 26 And, is an astrometric binary star system in the constellation Andromeda. "26 Andromedae" is the Flamsteed designation. It has a combined apparent visual magnitude of 6.10, which is near the lower limit of visibility to the naked eye. The distance to this system can be estimated from its annual parallax shift of , which yields a range of 610 light years. At that distance, the visual magnitude of the stars is diminished from an extinction of 0.04 due to interstellar dust. The system is moving further from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity