Scaling back to actual sizes, the distance from the Earth to the sun is an important measurement when talking about space. That distance is called a single astronomical unit, or AU. An AU is approximately 149,597,870,700 meters, or 92,955,807 miles. The AU is used to measure distances of all other celestial bodies such as planets and asteroids.
The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 250,000 AU away. That's 250,000 times farther from the Earth to the sun. However, when dealing with such large distances, astronomers use light-years, the distance light travels in a year, which is equal to 63,239 AU. Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light-years away from us. Quite the journey to explore our solar system neighbor!
