How to Use astronomical unit in a Sentence

astronomical unit

noun
  • One astronomical unit, is the distance from the sun to Earth.
    — Jenna Prestininzi, Freep.com, 17 Sep. 2025
  • One astronomical unit is equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 16 Oct. 2019
  • The distance between Earth and the sun is one astronomical unit.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 26 July 2021
  • How far is an astronomical unit, anyhow?
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Apr. 2026
  • Bannister refers is an astronomical unit, which is the mean distance from the center of the earth to the center of the sun.
    — Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 11 July 2016
  • The solar system is measured in Earth-sun distances, one of which is called an astronomical unit (au).
    — Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 19 July 2025
  • Astronomers use the distance between the Earth and the sun — one astronomical unit or au — to measure distance in the solar system.
    — Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 15 July 2025
  • And the light emission during the dimming suggests that the material can't be more than 16 astronomical units out.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 11 Oct. 2023
  • Calculations found that the outer star is 3,500 astronomical units (AU) away from the black hole.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 23 Oct. 2024
  • At a distance of just two astronomical units from its host star (twice the distance between Earth and the sun), the planet candidate, if confirmed, would be the closest to its host star ever imaged.
    — Stefanie Waldek, Space.com, 7 Aug. 2025
  • The radio burst’s complex, magnetized environment is within about an astronomical unit (the distance between Earth and the sun) from its source, the researchers found.
    — Kristen Rogers, CNN, 23 Sep. 2022
  • Neptune orbits the sun from, on average, 30 astronomical units (one AU is equivalent to the distance from Earth to the sun).
    — Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 11 Sep. 2025
  • The team discovered many young stars hosting tiny protoplanetary disks, some not much thicker than the distance between Earth and the sun (an astronomical unit, or AU).
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 28 Mar. 2025
  • Earth orbits the sun at an average distance of 93 million miles (150 million kilometers), a distance known as 1 astronomical unit.
    — Anthony Wood, Space.com, 3 Jan. 2026
  • One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, and Neptune's orbit is 60 astronomical units in diameter.
    — Greg Wehner, Fox News, 16 Jan. 2025
  • That is, with Venus and earth-like planets at habitable distances from their stars as well as gas giants orbiting at Jupiter-like distances (which in our solar system’s case is 5 astronomical units), or five times the average distance between the Earth and sun.
    — Bruce Dorminey, Forbes.com, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Cugno alludes to the fact that CT Cha b is also positioned within a circumstellar planet-forming disk, albeit at a huge distance from its star of 440 astronomical units (41 billion miles/65 billion kilometers).
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 30 Sep. 2025

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

Last Updated: