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As usual, we plopped the operative phrase, "astronomical unit" in this case, into our favorite search engine. First result: megaConverter, which sounds pretty promising. After a cool animation telling us just how deep it is 20,000 leagues under the sea, we arrive at the main megaConverter page, where users can investigate a broad range of measurement areas, from "ancient lengths" to "wine and spirits" to "zillions." We selected "astro distance" as our subject area then chose the appropriate measures, astronomical unit and kilometer. We entered the first value as "1" and hit the "calculate" button. The megaConverter announced "149,598,073" as the corresponding number of kilometers. Still, we wanted to know just what an astronomical
unit is used to measure, especially since it sounds a bit longer that your average road trip. By going back to our original search results, we found a page titled The Astronomical Unit. There we learned that the AU, as it's affectionately known, is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. At yet another page, infoplease.com, we were told that the AU is the primary measure of distance within the solar system, and that Pluto is 39 AU from the Sun. Brrrrrr.
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