How to Use light-year in a Sentence

light-year

noun
  • What seems light-years away is just around the corner.
    — Jennifer Weil, Footwear News, 20 Jan. 2026
  • Yes, trillions of light-years away from Earth.
    — Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 18 Dec. 2025
  • The pair span 978,469 light-years across.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Its host star is a dim bulb of a red dwarf about 49 light-years from our sun.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 21 Aug. 2026
  • By the way, just one light-year equals almost six trillion miles.
    — Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 12 Apr. 2026
  • By the way, just one light-year is almost 6 trillion miles.
    — Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 17 Aug. 2025
  • The distance is 66 million light-years, which is a bit of a hike.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Both are great and light-years better than rubber bands or a Ziploc.
    — Jen Murphy, Outside Online, 21 Oct. 2024
  • The jet bursts out through the clouds of the nebula and extends light-years into space.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 24 Apr. 2026
  • This blue-white star 77 light-years from our sun is one of the brightest in the April sky.
    — Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 7 Apr. 2025
  • At its distance, that view translates to nearly 80 light-years across.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 25 Dec. 2025
  • This stellar nursery is about 450 light-years away from Earth.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 11 Apr. 2024
  • By the time the light reaches us, that galaxy is more like 23 billion light-years away.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 2 Oct. 2025
  • Millions of light-years away, but because of that black thing Brit had come riding up the hill at dusk.
    — Literary Hub, 19 Aug. 2026
  • Of course, the hard part is trying to spot clear signs of life from more than 1,000 light-years away.
    — WIRED, 2 Oct. 2023
  • The stars that make up the locks are about 250 light-years away, just down the celestial block from us.
    — Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 25 May 2025
  • The light from that event would just now be reaching a galaxy 66 million light-years away, more or less.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Spica is the 16th brightest star in the sky and is 250 light-years away.
    — Joe Rao, Space.com, 15 May 2026
  • Imagine waking up, groggy and bearded, on a space ship light-years from Earth.
    — Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Scientific American, 22 Mar. 2026
  • Such visions pull our minds into journeys of light-years and thoughts far beyond or grounded world.
    — Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Apr. 2026
  • Inside lurk gas structures that span many dozens of light-years and the smaller clouds that envelope stars.
    — Claire Cameron, Scientific American, 26 Feb. 2026
  • Shaped like a filament, this structure of gas and dust is around 290 light-years long.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 22 June 2026
  • Imagine a distant light source, like a quasar, that sends light traveling for billions of light-years.
    — Paul Sutter, Space.com, 20 Dec. 2025
  • Barnard’s Star is small—about 15 percent the mass of our sun—and only around six light-years away.
    — Rudy Molinek, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Mar. 2025
  • The third category only gets out to four light-years, which isn’t even as far as the closest star to the sun.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 27 Feb. 2025
  • Aldebaran is the fourteenth brightest star in the sky and lies 67 light-years from Earth.
    — Joe Rao, Space.com, 10 July 2026
  • About the size of Saturn, the new world is circling a red dwarf star about 111 light-years away.
    — Alex Knapp, Forbes.com, 27 June 2025
  • What’s your reaction to the news of potential signs of life on a massive planet light-years away?
    — Jeremy Engle, New York Times, 25 Apr. 2025
  • How big would a telescope need to be to see Earth’s dinosaurs from 66 million light-years away?
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Malin 1 is about a billion light-years from Earth, an immense distance.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 29 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'light-year.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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