Udate: Han Solo’s Kessel Run is the focus of Solo: A Star Wars Storry. However, throughout the entire film, they never really explain what a parsec really is. Had I not already been elbow deep in parsac research I would have still been confused. Regardless, the Kessel run and how it relates to parsecs is still misleading.
As crazy as it sounds, I willing went to watch Star Wars I in 3D, Afterwards, I went home to watch the rest of the series. It had been a while since I have watched the complete series, and I decided to look some things up as I watched. The things I learned disturbed, and I wish I could un-learn them. But since I can’t, I am going to ruin it for every other casual Star Wars fan (like myself)! Let me tell you what I have now learned about Han Solo, the Millennium Falcon, and the 12 Parsec Kessel Run.
Parsec connects millions of people to their work, games, and friends from anywhere, across any device in silky smooth, ultra high definition interactive video. Parsec definition is - a unit of measure for interstellar space that is equal to 3.26 light-years and is the distance to an object having a parallax of one second as seen from points separated by one astronomical unit.
What is a Parsec, and what does it have to do with the Kessel Run?
“ You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? … It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.” -Han Solo’s Kessel Run quote
I’m sure you remember Han Solo spouting this off to Skywalker trying to express the speed of his ship. Sounds fast right? By now you are probably wondering “how fast is a parsec” but instead, you should be asking yourself, WHAT is a parsec.
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Guess what, Mr. Solo has deceived you. Don’t feel bad, that nerf herder got me too. This is the quote that got me started researching the Star Wars shenanigans. I was hoping to find out exactly, how fast is one parsec? What I learned instead was disturbing.
Parsecs: Time or Distance?
Get this, a parsec doesn’t measure time at all! A parsec is a measure of distance! This means that all Han Solo had to do was take the Millennium Falcon on a shortcut to make the Kessel Run in 12-Parsecs. The Millennium Flacon’s Kessel Run is all a big sham!
Now I’m thinking, “Hold up a minute, how did he make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs if a parsec doesn’t even measure time! If a parsec measures distance, shouldn’t the Kessel Run be a set number of parsecs?!?”
According to Wookipedia, the Kessel run is in fact, 18 parsecs:
The Kessel Run was an 18-parsec route used by smugglers to move glitterstim spice from Kessel to an area south of the Si’Klaata Cluster without getting caught by the Imperial ships that were guarding the movement of spice from Kessel’s mines.
So how did Han shorten an 18 Parsec trip to only 12 parsecs? He cheated, that’s how! So not only is he a liar, he is a cheater!
Ok, so he isn’t really either. Wookipedia goes onto explain exactly how it is all possible. Apparently, the Kessel run borders a black hole that *most* ships can’t fly very close to. However, the speedy Millennium Falcon is able to fly closer than any other ship and make the run in only 12 parsecs.
It turns out that technically Han Solo didn’t lie about the speed of the Millennium Falcon, nor did he cheat on the Kessel run. Technicalities aside, I personally think that it was an after thought. I have no clue where Wookipedia got this information, nor do I care, but a Parsec should just be what is insinuated, a measure of SPEED!
How far is a Parsec
Now that we have determined that Han Solo is the biggest hype man in the galaxy, let’s discuss Parsecs further. How long is a Parsec exactly? No joke, a Parsec is a real scientific measurement. Seriously, look it up. It is used to measure astronomical units.
From Wikipedia:
A parsec is the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arcsecond. One parsec is equal to about 3.26 light-years (31 trillion km or 19 trillion miles) in length. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) from the Sun.
So there you have it folks, a Parsec is about 3.26 light-years. Any more questions?
Final thoughts on the 12 Parsec Kessel Run
Han Solo technically isn’t a liar, but I still feel that he has deceived me all of these years. He could have just told it like it was “Screw you kid, this ship is fast as hell.” There, see how easy that was? No questions as to how fast the Millenium Falcon is. Adobe flash player free download for mac safari.
Now to address the Hardcore fans that are probably going to tear this post apart. I don’t care. This is how I see it. I didn’t read the books. I haven’t played the games. I don’t belong to any Star Wars porn sites. This was written straight from my interpretation of the films.
Listen to the MovieGuys discuss this topic on Episode 6 of The intermission Podcast. And then again on episode 7…. and again in the Star Wars Special….
A parsec is an astronomical unit of measurement that is equivalent to 3.26 light years distance, or the distance photons will travel in vacuum over the period of 3.26 years. Light travels at an approximate speed of 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second), so this distance is just over 19 trillion miles (about 31 trillion kilometers).
By comparison, the average distance to the Sun from Earth is only 93 million miles (150,000,000 km). This distance is referred to as 1 astronomical unit (AU). A person would have to make 103,000 round trips to the Sun to cover the distance indicated by a single parsec. Earth's solar system, defined for example by Pluto's orbit, is only 1/800ths of a light year across. It would have to be 2,608 times larger to equal 1 parsec across.
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This distance is calculated using the parallax of 1 arc second, leading to the shorter term, parsec. To understand what this means, it will be helpful to define the terms parallax and arc second.
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In a spherical plane or a simple circle bisected evenly by 180 lines that form 360 equal sections, the distance between two adjacent lines equals 1° of arc. All arcs added together equal 360° or the entire circle. If each degree of arc is bisected further into 60 more equal sections, each of these sections equals 1 arc minute, so 60 arc minutes equals 1° of arc. Each arc minute can be divided into 60 more equal sections, representing arc seconds. An arc second is therefore an angular measurement that equals 1/60th of an arc minute, or 1/3600 of a single degree of arc.
Parallax refers to the apparent motion of a fixed object along an angular trajectory due to a change in the observer's position. Mac address changer software windows. For example, if a person uses one eye to gaze at a computer monitor and then switches eyes, the monitor will seem to 'jump' horizontally in reference to the background. Scientists make use of parallax to measure the distance to stars.
To achieve the parallax effect, an object is photographed against background stars from a fixed position on Earth. Six months later, when the Earth has traveled halfway around its orbit at a relative distance of 186 million miles (2 AU) from the first position, a second photograph is taken. By measuring the distance the object 'jumped,' scientists can calculate the arc seconds of the parallax to reveal the distance. (As an aside, a third photograph is taken in one full year from the original position to calculate and subtract any effects from natural seasonal shift.) If a star generated 1 parallax arc second annually, scientists would know the distance to that star is 1 parsec, though no stars lie neatly at this distance.
The further the object, the less parallax it has, while the closer the object, the more parallax. This means that distance is inversely proportional to parallax: an object with a parallax of 0.5 arcsecond would be twice the distance of an object with 1 arcsecond of parallax. Conversely, if a star were close enough to have 2 arcseconds of parallax, it would be twice as close as an object with 1 arcsecond of parallax.
In reality, there are no stars located so near to Earth, aside from the Sun. Parallax is therefore measured in fractional increments corresponding with greater distances. Scientists also use milliarcseconds (mas), or 1/1000 of an arcsecond to indicate parallax in whole numbers. For example, the Sirius system lay at a distance of about 2.6 parsecs, (0.37921 arcsecond), or 379.21 mas.
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Parsecs are more convenient to indicate astronomical distances than light years. One thousand of them is known as a kiloparsec, or kpc, while a megaparsec is equal to 1 million, abbreviated as Mpc. A trip from Earth to the center of the Milky WayGalaxy would be a lengthy trip at just over 8.5 kpc.
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Although the units kpc and Mpc come in handy, to actually measure very distant stars of more than 100 parsecs or over 400 light years away, parallax is no longer viable. In that case, scientists use other methods involving the calculation of brightness, sometimes referred to as spectroscopic parallax.