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 ...

The simple answer is that the intrinsic brightness of these variable stars is strongly tied to their period. This is the famous period-luminosity relationship discovered by Henrietta Leavitt more than ...

The new results, from a team led by Grzegorz Pietrzyński (Universidad de Concepción, Chile, Obserwatorium Astronomiczne Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Poland), appear in the Nov. 25, 2010 edition of the ...

Measuring the distance to far away objects in space can be tricky. We don't even know the precise distance to even our closest neighbors in the universe—the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. But, ...

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) lies nearly 3 million light-years from Earth, while the Virgo cluster of galaxies extends 50 million light-years into the “local” universe. Have you ever wondered how ...

A new analysis of pulsing stars has revealed the Milky Way’s twisted shape. Scientists have known since the 1950s that the spiral-shaped Milky Way’s disk is warped, bending by thousands of light-years ...

Cepheid variables are pulsating supergiant stars whose regular brightness variations are tightly correlated with their intrinsic luminosities. This period–luminosity relation, often termed the Leavitt ...

In commemoration of Edwin Hubble's discovery of a Cepheid variable class star, called V1, in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy 100 years ago, astronomers partnered with the American Association of ...

The annual Perseids meteor shower is building to its peak in the middle of the night of the 12th to 13th, but has to battle against bright moonlight this year so that we notice only its brightest ...