| Astronomical units (au) | Hectometers (hm) |
|---|---|
| 1 Astronomical unit | 1495978707 hm |
| 2 Astronomical units | 2991957414 hm |
| 3 Astronomical units | 4487936121 hm |
| 4 Astronomical units | 5983914828 hm |
| 5 Astronomical units | 7479893535 hm |
| 10 Astronomical units | 14959787070 hm |
| 20 Astronomical units | 29919574140 hm |
| 25 Astronomical units | 37399467675 hm |
| 50 Astronomical units | 74798935350 hm |
| 100 Astronomical units | 149597870700 hm |
| Reference | Astronomical units (au) | Hectometers (hm) |
|---|---|---|
| A sheet of A4 paper (long side) | 1.98532 × 10-12 au | 0.00297 hm |
| Average adult human height | 1.13638 × 10-11 au | 0.017 hm |
| A football pitch (length) | 7.01882 × 10-10 au | 1.05 hm |
| A marathon | 0.000000282056 au | 421.95 hm |
| Height of Mount Everest | 0.0000000591519 au | 88.49 hm |
The astronomical unit is a length equal to exactly 149,597,870,700 metres, or very nearly 150 million kilometres. The symbol is au. It approximates the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun and is the standard measure for distances within the solar system.
The unit was originally defined by that orbital relationship rather than by a fixed number. Earlier definitions tied it to the properties of a hypothetical body orbiting the Sun, which meant its value depended on the gravitational constant and was subject to revision as measurements improved. The International Astronomical Union ended that dependence in 2012 by fixing the astronomical unit as an exact number of metres. The change simplified calculations and removed an inconvenience: a unit whose length shifted whenever a physical constant was refined.
Determining its value was one of the great problems of observational astronomy. Transits of Venus across the Sun's disc, observed from widely separated points on Earth, allowed the distance to be triangulated. Expeditions were mounted for the transits of 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882, and James Cook's first Pacific voyage was organised around the 1769 event. Radar ranging to Venus in the 1960s eventually settled the figure far more precisely than any optical method.
The unit makes solar system distances legible. Mercury orbits at 0.39 au, Mars at 1.52 au, Jupiter at 5.2 au and Neptune at 30.1 au. The Kuiper Belt extends to roughly 50 au. Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object, has passed 165 au. Light takes about 499 seconds to cover one astronomical unit, so the Sun is a little over eight light minutes away.
Beyond the solar system the unit becomes unwieldy, and astronomers switch to light years and parsecs. One parsec is 206,265 au.
Spacecraft navigation depends on the unit being exact rather than approximate. Trajectories to the outer planets are computed over distances of tens of astronomical units, and an error in the length of the unit itself would propagate into every position calculation. Fixing the value in 2012 removed that source of drift from the ephemerides used for mission planning.
One astronomical unit equals 149,597,870.7 kilometres, or about 92.956 million miles.
The hectometre is one hundred metres, written hm. It uses the SI prefix hecto, from the Greek hekaton meaning hundred. Like the decametre and the decimetre it is a legitimate unit that ordinary usage has largely bypassed in favour of metres and kilometres.
Its clearest application is in land measurement, where it appears indirectly. A square hectometre is 10,000 square metres, which is exactly one hectare. The hectare is the standard unit of land area in agriculture, forestry and property registration across most of the world, so the hectometre is embedded in daily practice even though the length itself is seldom named. A square field measuring one hectometre on each side covers one hectare.
Rail and road infrastructure provides the other common use. Several European railway networks mark distances with hectometre posts, placing a marker every hundred metres along the track. These give maintenance crews and signallers a precise location reference, and incident reports commonly cite a kilometre and hectometre figure. Dutch and Belgian motorways use hectometre markers in the same way, and drivers are directed to quote them when reporting a breakdown.
Athletics offers a familiar length without using the name. The straight of a standard outdoor track is one hectometre, and the 100 metres is the shortest standard sprint distance. Nobody calls it the one-hectometre sprint.
Meteorology uses the unit for cloud base height in some aviation reporting formats, where reporting in hundreds of metres or hundreds of feet keeps the figures compact.
Nautical charts and aviation both work in comparable steps without adopting the name. Runway visual range is reported in hundreds of metres in many countries, and visibility in aviation weather reports is given in metres up to five thousand, effectively in hectometre increments. Where the unit is used explicitly, as on Dutch motorways, its advantage is precision: a hectometre marker locates an incident to within fifty metres.
Radio engineering names a whole band after it. The international classification calls waves between 100 and 1000 metres hectometric, corresponding to frequencies from 300 kilohertz to 3 megahertz, and that band is the medium wave used for broadcasting since the 1920s. A transmitter working at 1000 kilohertz radiates a wave three hectometres long, which is why medium-wave aerials are tall masts rather than the short whips that serve higher frequencies. The naming continues in both directions: the band below is kilometric and the one above decametric, so the ladder of metric prefixes maps directly onto the divisions of the radio spectrum.
One hectometre equals 100 metres, 10 decametres, or 0.1 kilometres. It is approximately 328.084 feet, or 109.361 yards.