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I've read about hyperspace travel over the years, sometimes to try and answer questions on here, and something I've always come up against is how long any particular hyperspace trip actually takes. I rarely find direct evidence to answer this, and while I understand that it may often either be irrelevant to the plot, or is kept intentionally uncertain, I was wondering if there is any evidence in current Canon to show how long a hyperspace trip actually takes in-universe.

As far as I can tell, hyperspace travel times in the Star Wars galaxy depend on multiple factors such as:

  • The class of hyperdrive your ship has
  • The origin, the destination, and the distance between them
  • The quality of your navicomputer and the information that it will be using to make its calculations
  • The route you take and how many times you have to drop out of hyperspace, recalculate, possibly fly a bit to get to a new starting point, and then go back into hyperspace
  • Whether you take one of the main hyperlanes, or not

However, this is only 'in theory'. My question has more to do with actual examples of travel time in the Star Wars galaxy, not how long they theoretically take. The consensus that I have found here and elsewhere is that hyperspace trips usually take in the order of hours to days to complete, but are there any specific examples in Canon as to how long particular journeys actually took in-universe?


Note 1: If there are any specific examples from Legends relating to this, please include them as it is useful to understand the practice of hyperspace travel in general, but the emphasis should be on Canon examples (should they exist.)

Note 2: My question may be a duplicate of two other ones I have found on here - I have referenced both of them below and why I think my question is different - but I thought it worth asking just in-case.

  • The first question deals with trying to source information for the speed of traversing the entire galaxy in general, which, while helpful, is different from asking for specific examples of hyperspace trip lengths.
  • The second question really only deals with how fast a ship can go in hyperspace, which is only one aspect of answering my overall question of sourcing examples of how long specific trips actually took in-universe.

Note 3: This question seems tangential to mine and provides some interesting information as well.

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    The RPGs have a whole bunch of info about how long trips take. Get ready for fun with maths!
    – Valorum
    Oct 14, 2019 at 21:09
  • I've not seen any definitive source in current canon (films, shows, or novels) that can provide any reliably accurate method of calculating travel times. The RPG source books are the closest I've found, and even those don't always seem to be consistent. Even the hyperspace calculation web sites can't seem to give consistent measurements. I'm definitely interested in finding a legitimate canon answer, though... Oct 14, 2019 at 21:49

3 Answers 3

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There are none as far as I know. (Given the wealth of material available, I would certainly not claim to know it all.)

It seems that, for all intents and purposes, ships travel at the speed of plot, and arrive, or not, when the plot requires it for dramatic tension.

I do not recall any indication of travel time being given in the movies or in the series, and only some indication of distances in some books, but without adding how long it would take to travel said distance, rendering them meaningless. Not to mention that a Star Destroyer does not travel at the same speed that an X-Wing fighter or the Millennium Falcon does.

The RPG books from West End Games tried to give some indications of travel time in an Astrogation Chart, but it was woefully incoherent: in some cases, you could cut travel time by 90% by making two steps at other planets instead of taking the direct routes.

Since we are never told the exact speed of ships (The Falcon can go 0.5 above lightspeed, but 0.5 of what?) nor the distances (How far is Alderaan from Tatooine?) there is absolutely no way to know hyperspace travel time.

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  • There's a further complication (at least in new canon) in that distances in hyperspace are different than distances in realspace. Essentially there's no correlation to actual distance travelled and travel time, so concievably a one-second trip could take you from one side of the galaxy to the other if you found a viable hyperspace route. Oct 15, 2019 at 16:51
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The galaxy can be crossed within a few hours at most

The Rise of Skywalker is probably the most definitive Canon source so far in regard to how long it takes to fly across the galaxy.

Early in the film, after Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base in the Millennium Falcon, Poe says that the Sith Eternal fleet is going to leave Exegol in sixteen hours. At the end, the Sith fleet is prevented from leaving by the arrival of the Resistance and the citizens' fleet. Therefore, we can assume that the following takes place in sixteen hours or less:

  1. Rey, Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, and C-3PO fly from Ajan Kloss to Pasaana in the Millennium Falcon, roughly half the diameter of the galaxy according to the map in The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary.
  2. The group spends some time at the festival on Pasaana, finds Lando, gets chased, falls into a cave, confronts a snake, and finds a dagger. Kylo Ren crash-lands his ship at Rey and Chewbacca gets kidnapped. Everyone else escapes in Ochi's ship. Poe says they have eight hours left.
  3. The group flies from Pasaana to Kijimi on the Bestoon Legacy, roughly 1/4 of the diameter of the galaxy.
  4. The group spends some time on Kijimi while Babu Frik works on C-3PO. The First Order ship Steadfast shows up above Kijimi and the group mounts a rescue mission for Chewbacca, gets captured, gets freed, and steals the Falcon back.
  5. The group flies from Kijimi to Kef Bir on the Falcon, roughly 2/3 of the diameter of the galaxy.
  6. Rey travels across the ocean to the Death Star II ruins and climbs to the Emperor's throne room. Had the Death Star been intact this would have been an 80km climb. She fights Kylo Ren and steals his TIE fighter.
  7. Rey flies from Kef Bir to Ahch-To, roughly 1/4 of the diameter of the galaxy.
  8. Rey sets the TIE fighter on fire, only for Luke's ghost to intervene and lift his X-wing out of the ocean.
  9. Meanwhile, the rest of the group flies from Kef Bir to Ajan Kloss in the Millennium Falcon, roughly 3/4 of the diameter of the galaxy.
  10. Rey flies from Ahch-To to Exegol in Luke's waterlogged X-wing, roughly 1/4 of the diameter of the galaxy, through what's described as a rough area of space. This explicitly happens after rest of the group gets back to Ajan Kloss and before they leave for Exegol.
  11. The Resistance fleet flies from Ajan Kloss to Exegol in various ships, roughly 1/3 of the diameter of the galaxy.

Diagram of interstellar travel in The Rise of Skywalker, showing the galaxy and labeled distances

From this we can conclude:

  • It takes the Millennium Falcon less than eight hours to fly about halfway across the galaxy (trip 1) and do a bunch of stuff on Pasaana.
  • Assuming there's no great difference in hyperdrive speeds, it takes less than eight hours to travel roughly 1 1/2 (Rey's trip 3+5+7+10) to 2 1/4 (Poe's trip 3+5+9+11) times the diameter of the galaxy and do a bunch of other stuff.

Given all this, at a very liberal estimate, it takes no more than 3 1/2 hours to travel across the entire galaxy, and probably much less when allowing time for the rest of the events of the film, indirect hyperspace routes, most ships being slower than the Falcon, and the difficulty of navigating near Exegol.

This is corroborated by The Last Jedi, in which Finn and Rose fly from Cantonica to Crait after Poe says the Resistance fleet has six hours of fuel left, which is roughly 3/4 the diameter of the galaxy. Like TROS, this includes some other adventures, so the actual travel time is probably much less.

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Apparently the hyperdrive trip of the Death Star from the Alderaan system to the Yavin System took less than one Star Wars day.

The Millennium Falcon appeared in the Alderaan system and was taken aboard the Death Star that was still lurking there.

Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader fought. The Millennium Falcon escaped and headed for the rebel base. And Darth Vader said something like "this is a day that will long be remembered. It has seen the death of Kenobi and it will see the destruction of the rebellion."

This implies that the hyperdrive trip from Alderaan to Yavin takes less than one Star Wars day for both the Millennium Falcon and the pursuing Death Star.

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    This answer is meaningless, doesn't answer the question and is essentially a comment unless you state the distance between the two locations. It doesn't really give us any meaningful information.
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Oct 15, 2019 at 14:39
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    It's not meaningless. It can't be generalized, but the question didn't ask how fast the ship travelled, only how long it took to make the trip. This answer provides a specific jump (Alderaan to Yavin, assuming at least the Death Star didn't travel significantly out of the Alderaan system in the meantime), and provides an upper bound on the time it took based on a reasonable interpretation of in-movie dialog.
    – chepner
    Oct 15, 2019 at 17:32
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    'A day to be remembered' is an expression, not proof that the travel between Alderaan to Yavin took a day.
    – Sava
    Oct 21, 2019 at 7:38
  • When event A happened 3 weeks ago and event B happened today, you wouldn't use the expression to refer to both events. I consider it strong evidence that both events occurred at least within an interval of the same length as a day.
    – chepner
    Dec 2, 2022 at 20:22

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