The Astronomical Unit, or AU was originally defined as the average distance from the Earth to the Sun when at the closest and farthest points apart (called the aphelion and perihelion respectively). i.e. 1 × AU is about 150 million km (93 million miles) or about 8 light-minutes.

In 2012 the AU was defined to be exactly 149,597,870.7 km.

Measuring distances in Astronomical Units, provides a reasonable 'yardstick' for measuring distances on the scale of the Solar system, which would otherwise become unwieldy if they had to be represented in km or miles.

For the even larger distances outside of the Solar System, the Astronical Unit forms the basis of another distance measurement the parsec.

A parsec is defined as the distance which one AU subtends an angle of one arcsecond (1/3600^th of a degree), and is equivalent to approx. 206,264.8 AU's or 3.262 light-years.

i.e. if when the Earth moves through a distance of 1 AU, a star appears to move by 1/3600^th of a degree when compared to background stars, then the disance to the star is 1 parsec.

For example our closest major galaxy, Andromeda is 778,000 parsecs away, or approx. 160 billion AU (or 2.537 million light-years).

The apparent magnitude of a star is a measure of how bright it appears from Earth. The scale was introduced over 2,000 years ago by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who grouped stars into six categories. The brightest 20 or so were deemed to be 'first magnitude', slightly dimmer stars 'second magnitude', and so on until the barely visible stars were classed as 'sixth magnitude'.

Later it was recognised that our eyesight, once it has been given time to get used to darkness, has a logarithmic response. i.e. a Mag. 1 star is actually 2.512 times brighter than a Mag. 2 star, or 6.310 times brighter than a Mag. 3 star (2.512 x 2.512 = 6.310).

The six Magnitudes thus corresponds to a 2.512⁶ difference in brightness or 100x.

Today the scale has now been extended, so that brighter objects can have an apparent magnitude of 0 or even negative. The brightest star Sirius, for example, has an apparent magnitude of -1.44 and the Sun is a whopping -26.74, due to it's close proximity to Earth.