Convert Light Years (ly) to Picas (pc)

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 pica is a unit of length in the field of typography and uses the symbol pc.

There are 12 points in 1 pica. On computers 1 pica is exactly 1/6 of an inch (about 4.23 mm).

Picas are expressed using numbers and a lower case p on software such as Adobe InDesign - for example 8p6 which would represent 8 picas and 6 points (or 8.5 picas).

The Pica is very useful in measuring and calculating the space needed to print letters and words on paper - for example when laying out books or magazine articles; the font lengths are quantified by the number of characters per pica (cpp).