I’m sure many of you know of Han Solo’s famous Kessel Run–which he made in “less than 12 parsecs.”

He says this as if he’s declaring a new time record, like I might brag that I ran a marathon in 2 hours. (I haven’t.)

The problem: parsecs are, in fact, a unit of distance. Not time.

I’ve seen a lot of internet chatter from Star Wars fans, positing ideas as to whether this was a scriptwriting mistake or whether Solo took some kind of distance shortcut. But it’s far from the only astronomical measurement that people get confused.

And why wouldn’t you? After all, the distances–and times, temperatures, masses, etc–that we talk about in astronomy are so huge they boggle the mind.

So let’s break this down…

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