Parsec / Legends A parsec was a unit of distance equal to 3 . 26 light year s . The system used by starship navigators throughout the galaxy to record the location of star systems was based on parsecs , with one unit on the coordinate scale corresponding to 15 parsecs . Behind the scenes . In the real world , a is a measurement of distance based on apparent stellar motion as observed from Earth . It is defined as 360×60×60 / 2π ( AU ) , which is equivalent to about 19 . 17 trillion miles , or about 3 . 262 . The " Star Wars " parsec appears to be equivalent to the real - world measurement : The " Decoded " version of the " " episode " Dooku Captured " says that six parsecs equals about 114 trillion miles , making one parsec about 19 trillion miles . " The Essential Atlas " says a parsec is 3 . 26 light - years . If the " Star Wars " galaxy is similar in size to , roughly 30 , 000 parsecs across , elementary arithmetic shows that any ship capable of traveling across the galaxy in only a few weeks could travel about a parsec per minute . However , in " The Courtship of Princess Leia " , it takes more than a week to travel a distance of only seventy parsecs ( the stated distance between Dathomir and Coruscant ) , and in " Attack of the Clones " , it seems to take many hours to travel the distance between Tatooine and Geonosis , which is stated to be less than a parsec . However , the map Amidala shows Anakin while talking about the distance only seems to zoom about tenfold from the entire galaxy , implying that either the " Star Wars " galaxy is very small ( which seems unlikely , since no night sky seems to show the huge numbers of visible stars that would be consistent with the corresponding smaller interstellar distances ) , or Amidala misspoke . The latter would make more sense from a statistical standpoint , since the odds of two random planets in the galaxy being within a parsec of each other are about one to a hundred billion . " A New Hope " Mess - up ? In , Han Solo boasted about the speed of his spaceship by claiming it made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs , despite a parsec being a unit of distance . ( In the , he said , " less than twelve standard timeparts . " ) Screenwriter George Lucas claimed the seeming gaffe in the film was intentional , showing that Han was something of a bull artist who didn ' t always know precisely what he was talking about . Within the Expanded Universe , Kevin J . Anderson later retcon ned an explanation : the Kessel Run is through the Maw . Event horizons around black holes are dependent on the speed at which you are traveling . A standard ship has to do the run in eighteen parsecs because to cut the route any closer , the ship would get sucked in . The " Falcon " , however , is fast enough to straighten the route and cut over six parsecs off the distance traveled . The director ' s commentary on the Blu - Ray " Star Wars " set explains that hyperspace travel requires heavy computation to compute a path that does not cause you to fly through a star . The " Millennium Falcon " has customized computation engines that calculate shorter hyperspace paths more quickly than those in other ships . Shorter distances mean faster travel times . The " Falcon " reduces travel times by a combination of being faster in a traditional sense , and by using more accurate navigation calculations .