Word: cepheid
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Instead, astronomers at Harvard and at Mt. Palomar, gathering evidence with "ordinary" telescopes and re-analyzing old data have shown that classical Cepheid variable star are actually brighter than had been assumed. Knowing the absolute or intrinsic brightness of these particular stars, and from their apparent brightness, astronomers can determine the distances of nearby galaxies. The new results show that these stars are brighter than previously suspected, so that the distances of the galaxies are about twice their older values. Thus the part of the universe that astronomers have probed has about eight times the volume they had thought...