A team of astronomers including Carnegie's Ian Thompson have managed to improve the measurement of the distance to our nearest neighbor galaxy and, in the process, refine an astronomical calculation that helps measure the ...
Astronomy
Mar 6, 2013
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(Phys.org)—The North Star (Polaris) has played an important role in human history, yet knowledge of its fundamental parameters is unsatisfactory. That problem is attributable in large part to uncertainties tied to the star's ...
Astronomy
Nov 30, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time ...
Astronomy
May 23, 2011
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This image of NGC 247, taken by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, reveals the fine details of this highly inclined spiral galaxy and its rich backdrop. Astronomers ...
Astronomy
Mar 2, 2011
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When Hubble first discovered a Cepheid variable in the galaxy M31, the universe grew. Previously, many astronomers had held that the fuzzy “spiral nebulae” were small patches of gas and dust within our own galaxy, ...
Astronomy
Jan 14, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have turned up the first direct proof that "standard candles" used to illuminate the size of the universe, termed Cepheids, shrink in mass, making them not quite as standard as once thought. The ...
Astronomy
Jan 12, 2011
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Many classes of stars are named for an early, distinguished member of a certain type of stars. For example, Cepheid variables take their namesake from the periodic variable Delta Cephei, first recognized by John Goodricke, ...
Astronomy
Dec 22, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- By discovering the first double star where a pulsating Cepheid variable and another star pass in front of one another, an international team of astronomers has solved a decades-old mystery. The rare alignment ...
Astronomy
Nov 24, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A Cepheid star is one whose mass and age results in physical conditions that generate periodic oscillations in its photosphere. A Cepheid thus varies regularly in brightness, with a period proportional to ...
Astronomy
May 28, 2010
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