Astronomical Unit - Examples

Examples

The distances are approximate mean distances. It has to be taken into consideration that the distances between celestial bodies change in time due to their orbits and other factors.

  • The Moon is 0.0026 ± 0.0001 AU from the Earth
  • Mercury is 0.39 ± 0.09 AU from the Sun
  • Venus is 0.72 ± 0.01 AU from the Sun
  • The Earth is 1.00 ± 0.02 AU from the Sun
  • Mars is 1.52 ± 0.14 AU from the Sun
  • Jupiter is 5.20 ± 0.25 AU from the Sun
  • 5.5 AU: the mean diameter of Betelgeuse (or 822 800 000 km)
  • 8.4–9.8 AU: the radius of VY Canis Majoris, the largest known star
  • Saturn is 9.58 ± 0.53 AU from the Sun
  • Uranus is 19.23 ± 0.85 AU from the Sun
  • The New Horizons spacecraft is about 22 AU from the Sun (as of 2012), as it makes its way to Pluto for a flyby.
  • Neptune is 30.10 ± 0.34 AU from the Sun
  • The Kuiper belt begins at roughly 30 AU
  • Pluto is 39.3 ± 9.6 AU from the Sun
  • Beginning of the scattered disk at 45 AU (10 AU overlap with Kuiper Belt)
  • Ending of Kuiper belt at 50-55 AU
  • 90377 Sedna's orbit ranges between 76 and 942 AU from the Sun; Sedna is currently (as of 2012) about 87 AU from the Sun
  • 94 AU: termination shock between solar winds/interstellar winds/interstellar medium
  • 96.7 AU: the distance of dwarf planet Eris from the Sun, as of 2009. Eris and its moon are currently the most distant known objects in the Solar System apart from long-period comets and space probes.
  • 100 AU: heliosheath
  • 122 AU: as of September 2012, Voyager 1 is the furthest human-made object from the Sun; it is currently traveling at about 3½ AU/yr.
  • 100-1000 AU: mostly populated by objects from the scattered disc
  • 1000-3000 AU: beginning of Hills cloud/inner Oort cloud
  • 20,000 AU: ending of Hills cloud/inner Oort cloud, beginning of outer Oort cloud
  • 50,000 AU: possible closest estimate of the outer Oort cloud limits (0.8 ly)
  • 100,000 AU: possible farthest estimate of the outer Oort cloud limits (1.6 ly)
  • 230,000 AU: maximum extent of influence of the Sun's gravitational field (Hill/Roche sphere)—beyond this is true interstellar medium. This distance is 1.1 parsecs (3.6 light-years).
  • Proxima Centauri (the nearest star to Earth, excluding our own Sun) is ~268 000 AU from the Sun
  • The distance from the Sun to the center of the Milky Way is approximately 1.7×109 AU

Read more about this topic:  Astronomical Unit

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