How far away is Voyager in light years?

[flobadob]

I was reading that the Voyager probe is now 74 billion kilometres away from earth. I'm just wondering how far is that in terms of a light year. For fun could someone give the answer as a reference to a real year, as in a month, or two weeks or whatever the ratio may be?

[MarkRae]

Assuming you mean the "new" billion i.e. 74,000,000,000 miles, that is approximately 0.008 light years, an infinitesimally short astronomical distance...

[flobadob]

Not sure Mark of what the billion referred to for sure but I would take it that it is the number you mentioned. By the way, going by your 0.008 answer I put that as roughly 3 days away in terms of lights years. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Buenchico]

Yes, three light days is the rough distance.

[MarkRae]

Correct.

[vascop]

I don't understand the second part of your question "as a reference to a real year".
Don't forget that light year is a measure of distance not time. What ratio are you talking about?

[wildwood]

Oh dear! I tried several times and made it 4.6 days. Oh well back to school.

Please Mark or Chris, could you do a rough explanation.

[vascop]

I get the same as you WW.
Speed of light is 186000 miles per second, so 1 light day=186 x 10^3 x 24 x 60 x 60 miles
so 1 light day = 1.60704 x 10^10
So 74,000,000,000 miles is 7.4 x 10^10/(1.60704 x 10^10)=7.4/1.60704= approx 4.6 light days

[DTCwordfan]

Time to don the Superman suits and be off to "Infinity and Beyond"

[flobadob]

So it has taken 30 odd years for mankind to send an object 3 light days. Oh dear. Guess we won't be bumping into Darth, Luke and co. any time soon. Unless they come over to see us.

[sidkid]

Question says 75 billion KILOMETRES which is considerably less than 74 billion miles. So answer is probably nearer to 3 light days.....

[sidkid]

Bit confused now - Wikipedia states that Voyager 1 (as at 14th March 2011) was 10.8 billion miles away so that would be approx 16 light hours....perhaps no-one knows for sure where the heck it is! Bring on the conspiracy theories......

[sidkid]

oops - 74 not 75 in last but one.

[vascop]

Thanks sidkid for the correction
So answer should be 4.6 x 0.62=.2.85. Approximately 3 light days as you say

[bibblebub]

"an infinitesimally short astronomical distance" would be 0

[DTCwordfan]

well if the answer is 0 , then Buzz Lightyear would say ""Infinity and Beyond, Been there, Done that."

[bibblebub]

just commenting on the use of that phrase, which would be a distance closer to 0 than 0.008 light years

[douglas9401]

A staggering achievement whichever way it's measured.
This kind of performance from a machine made by a race that can't even empty the bins efficiently.

[vascop]

Yes, flobadob, where did you get that 74 billion kilometres figure from. It looks like it should be about 6 billion miles and so would be less than 8 light hours away.

[flobadob]

My mistake, you are corrects sirs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/...-environment-11988466