Posts by Steven Edwards

1) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : Distance unit nomenclature (Message 58438) Posted 30 May 2013 by Steven Edwards Post: Greetings, all. This is my first post here. I've been doing amateur astronomy for more than four decades, and one thing that I haven't quite understood is the continuing use of distance units "AU" (149.6 gigameters), light year (9.461 petameters) and "parsec" (30.86 petameters) instead of SI units. Long ago in the pre-web days I suggested that we use the term nautical light year (NLY) to indicate a distance of 10 petameters. (Compare with "nautical mile".) I was told another had come up with the identical idea earlier, but it gained no traction. I have also heard the suggestion that we could us the term "sagan" for a billion billion meters (1 exameter).