powers of ten

Powers of Ten

The distances and sizes of of the objects astronomers study vary from very small, including atoms and atomic nuclei, to very large including galaxies, clusters of galaxies and the size of the universe. To describe such a huge range, astronomers need a way to avoid confusing terms like "a billion trillion" and "a millionth". Astronomers use a system called powers-of-ten notation, which consolidates all of the zeros that you would normally find attached to very large or small numbers such as 1,000,000,000,000 or 0.0000000001.