Earth's distance from the sun does not stay the same throughout the year. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. An astronomical unit ...

One of the stalwart units of astronomy just got a makeover. The International Astronomical Union, the authority on astronomical constants, has voted unanimously to redefine the astronomical unit, the ...

Click anywhere on this site, and you’ll likely run into a measurement in terms of light-years, solar masses, astronomical units, or arcminutes. These units are unique to astronomy, and all can be ...

If you guessed the astronomical unit, you are correct. The au — the rough distance between the Earth and the Sun — was previously determined by a confusing calculation (“the radius of an unperturbed ...

Appearances aside, the stars are not eternal and the planets do not move with clockwork precision. For these reasons, one astronomer is proposing that his colleagues ditch the astronomical unit, or AU ...

When it comes to dealing with the cosmos, we humans like to couch things in familiar terms. When examining exoplanets, we classify them based on their similarities to the planets in our own Solar ...

The sun still shines as bright, but according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), its precise distance from us has just changed. At a recent meeting of the IAU in Beijing, China, members ...

Who even knows what an "astronomical unit" is anyway? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Add us as a preferred source on Google Have ...

An independent determination of the astronomical unit became possible using radar echoes from Venus, but the radar result differs significantly from Rabe's result. Considerable effort was made by ...

Scientists still define astronomical time in years, with some recent refinements. By C. Claiborne Ray Q. Do scientists actually speak of the age of the universe in years, or do they use some ...

One of the stalwart units of astronomy just got a makeover. The International Astronomical Union, the authority on astronomical constants, has voted unanimously to redefine the astronomical unit, the ...