The planets’ orbits around the Sun are ellipses. Nearly circular, but not quite. Nevertheless, we usually quote a single number for the distance from the Sun to, say, Earth. It’s usually quoted in miles or kilometers.

The speed of light is quite nearly 3 x 10^8 meters per second, or 186,000 miles per second. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. Similarly, a light-minute, light-second, and so on. So your challenge today: how far is each of the planets from the Sun, in light-minutes. (And yes, we’ll accept miles or kilometers instead.)

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Yesterday’s question was to match the ballets with their composers. The answers are:

Afternoon of a Faun — Claude Debussy
Appalachian Spring — Aaron Copland
The Firebird — Igor Stravinsky
The Four Seasons — Giuseppe Verdi
Midnight Sun — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Nutcracker — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The Rite of Spring — Igor Stravinsky
Romeo and Juliet — Sergei Prokofiev
The Sleeping Beauty — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Swan Lake — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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Ian’s Tough Trivia is a daily feature of this blog (Monday’s category is History; Tuesday is Arts; Wednesday is Science; Thursday is Entertainment; and Friday is Grab Bag). Each day, I post a tough question, as well as the answer to the previous day’s question. Simply comment on this post with your answer. I’ll approve the comments after the next question is posted. Sure, you can probably find the answers by searching the web, but what’s the fun in that?

And if you’ve got a favorite trivia question—or even just a topic for which you’d like to see a question—let me know! Reader participation is warmly encouraged.