Centimeters to Megaparsecs (cm to Mpc)

1 centimeter equals 3.240779289×10⁻²⁵ megaparsecs (rounded).

1 centimeter = 3.240779289×10⁻²⁵ megaparsecs

How to convert centimeters to megaparsecs

To convert centimeters to megaparsecs, multiply the number of centimeters by 3.240779289×10⁻²⁵. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply megaparsecs by 3.085677581×10²⁴ (rounded).

megaparsecs = centimeters × 3.240779289×10⁻²⁵

Example: 10 centimeters = 3.240779289×10⁻²⁴ megaparsecs.

About these units

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Megaparsec (Mpc)

AstronomicalCurrent unit

One million parsecs (about 3.26 million light-years). Used for distances between galaxies.

Galaxies are too far apart for the parsec to be comfortable, so astronomers multiply it by a million. A megaparsec, symbol Mpc, is 1,000,000 parsecs, or roughly 3.26 million light-years and about 3.09 times ten to the twenty-second power meters. It has no article of its own on Wikipedia and is treated as one of the parsec's multiples, alongside the kiloparsec for distances inside a galaxy and the gigaparsec for the largest cosmic structures.

Neighboring galaxies sit at a fraction of a megaparsec: the Andromeda Galaxy is about 0.78 Mpc away, while the Virgo Cluster lies near 16.5 Mpc. Cosmologists also use the unit inside the Hubble constant, quoted in kilometers per second per megaparsec, which expresses how fast distant galaxies recede for each megaparsec of separation. The Milky Way itself is roughly 34 kiloparsecs across, a useful reminder of how much larger intergalactic distances are.

1 megaparsec = 3.085677581×10²² meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Parsec; Wikipedia: Megaparsec (redirects to Parsec)

Related conversions

See all length units.