... Bad Astronomy . Misconceptions . ... Bad Astronomy : "We're light years more advanced than our competition!" ... Even the closest astronomical object, the Moon, is 400,000 kilometers away! ... A beam of light will travel 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers in one year. This distance is defined as a light year ; the distance light travels in a year. ... This is another example of Bad Astronomy; like a light year, a parsec is a unit of distance, not time (to be specific, it equals 3.26 light years) . ...