Convert Light Years (ly) to Ells (ell)

The light year is a unit of length in the Astronomical system of units. It uses the symbol ly.

Often confused with a unit of time as it contains the word "year", it is actually defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as the amount of distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days).

Using the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s or 'c') and the Julian year (as apposed to the Gregorian year which is 365.2425 days), we can equivalate 1 light year as 9,460,730,472,580,800 metres or ≈ 9.46 trillion kilometres.

The ell is a unit of length and originates from historic England and uses the symbol ell.

The ell usually measured 45in or 1.143m but was origally a "cubit" - which was the length from your elbow to the tip of your fingers and literally translated from the word "arm". It was mostly used in the tailoring world when buying and selling textiles.

Although now obsolete, the word "ell" still survives in the English word "elbow".