Suzanne Levering age 10 Denver, CO or her question:

What is a light year?

A million miles is a very short distance in the sky. The old sun is over 93 million miles away from us, Its nearest star neighbor is trillions of miles away, All this runs into a lot of figures. The astronomers had to have a larger measuring rod for distances between the stars, They chose a measure of distance and speed.

The fastest traveler known is light, It whips across. the vast reaches of space at about 186,000 miles a second.  One light year 'is the distance covered by light in one year, This distance tots up to about six trillion miles, The star nearest to our sun is about 4.4 light years away, It is far easier to write 4.41 than to write  trillion miles,

Bright Sirius is the nearest star we see north of the equator, It is 8.8 light years away from our sun, The glitter you see from Sirius tonight set out on its way over eight years ago when you were only three friars old.