Parsecs to Feet (pc to ft)

1 parsec equals 1.012361411×10¹⁷ feet (rounded).

1 parsec = 1.012361411×10¹⁷ feet

How to convert parsecs to feet

To convert parsecs to feet, multiply the number of parsecs by 1.012361411×10¹⁷. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply feet by 9.877895274×10⁻¹⁸ (rounded).

feet = parsecs × 1.012361411×10¹⁷

Example: 10 parsecs = 1.012361411×10¹⁸ feet.

About these units

Parsec (pc)

AstronomicalCurrent unit

About 3.26 light-years, defined as 648,000/π astronomical units. The standard unit for distances to stars.

British astronomer Herbert Hall Turner coined the word in 1913 as a contraction of the distance at which a parallax equals one arcsecond. Rivals were Frank Dyson's astron and Carl Charlier's siriometer. The idea rests on stellar parallax, first measured successfully by Friedrich Bessel in 1838 for 61 Cygni, which he put near 3.5 parsecs. With the angle in arcseconds, the distance in parsecs is simply its reciprocal.

Since 2015 the IAU has defined the parsec as exactly 648,000 divided by pi astronomical units, which with the 2012 exact au gives about 30,856,775,814,913,673 meters, or 3.0857 times ten to the sixteenth power. That is roughly 3.26 light-years. Proxima Centauri lies about 1.3 parsecs away. Professional astronomers still prefer the parsec to the light-year, and ESA's Gaia satellite, launched in 2013, measures parallaxes to microarcsecond precision.

1 parsec = 3.085677581×10¹⁶ meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Parsec; NIST SP 811 Appendix B.8: factors for units outside the SI

Foot (ft)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

12 inches. Defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. Still the standard unit for height, altitude in aviation and room dimensions in the US and UK.

Human anatomy supplied the idea: an adult foot is roughly 15 percent of body height. Ancient cultures turned that into standards, but not the same one. The Greek pous was about 302 mm, the standard Roman pes about 295.7 mm, and a Harappan foot of about 335 mm has been reported from the Indus Valley. Historically, a foot fell somewhere between about 250 and 335 mm. Charlemagne tried to standardize units around 790 with little lasting success, and in 1593 English law fixed the statute mile at 5,280 feet.

The modern foot dates from the 1959 International Yard and Pound Agreement, which defined the yard as exactly 0.9144 meter and so the foot as exactly 0.3048 meter; the UK adopted it on 1 January 1964. The US survey foot, defined in 1893 as 1200/3937 meter, was deprecated on 31 December 2022. Feet remain in everyday use for height and rooms in the US, and ISO shipping containers are defined in them. Aviation altitudes use them too: flight level 330 means 33,000 feet.

1 foot = 0.3048 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Foot (unit); Wikipedia: Mile; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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