How did a Cepheid variable star help Edwin Hubble prove the Andromeda Nebula was a galaxy? Roger Brady San Quentin, California Cepheids are rare variable stars with periods ranging from about 1 to 120 ...

Astronomers from the University of Warsaw, Poland and elsewhere have detected a new classical Cepheid variable star. The newfound star, which received designation OGLE-GD-CEP-1884, has the longest ...

That Cepheid variable star became known simply as ‘V1’. "He knew, because of work done by Henrietta Leavitt and Harlow Shapley, that this meant he could measure the distance to a spiral nebula ...

These young stars are Cepheid variables–“standard candles” that astronomers use to measure distances. According to Chakrabarti, these are the most distant Cepheid variables found close to the plane of ...

An artist’s interpretation of the distribution of young stars shown by Cepheid Variable stars in blue. Besides a small clump in the center of the galaxy, for 8,000 light-years around the center ...

Cepheid variables (or Cepheids) are luminous, yellow, horizontal branch stars changing their brightness with time as a result of regular stellar pulsations.

Letter Published: 31 July 1937 Maintenance of the Pulsation in Cepheid Variables J. WOLTJER JUN. Nature 140, 195 (1937) Cite this article ...

The star RS Puppis is one of the most luminous Cepheid variable stars, exhibiting a six-week cycle of changing brightness. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-Hubble/Europe ...

An infrared image of the Cepheid variable star OGLE-BLG-CEP-32 and its neighboring stars (left), along with its spectrum of light as taken by the South African Large Telescope (right).

This is where Cepheid Variables come in. Cepheids are an interesting class of star which change their brightness over time in a predictable, repeating pattern.

Using this, astronomers only needed to know the period of a cepheid variable to figure out how bright, and therefore how far away it was. Until then, methods for measuring distances in space only ...