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 ...

This week on Looking Up guest host Caitlyn Voige illuminates a luminary by the name of Henrietta Swan Leavitt. When we look up into the night sky, stars look immeasurably small and distant, unchanging ...

A standard candle is an object whose luminosity, or brightness, is a known quantity. Standard candles are used by astronomers to estimate the distance of the candle itself, as well as nearby features, ...

Hubble proved Andromeda is a separate galaxy by identifying a Cepheid variable star within it. Cepheid variables have a period-luminosity relationship: longer period means greater brightness. Knowing ...

Later this decade, the Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to the High-Luminosity LHC. What does “luminosity” mean in particle physics? Even on the hottest and driest days, rays from the sun are ...

Flagstaff, Ariz. — For the first time, astronomers have collected and analyzed a long-term set of activity and brightness measurements of a “solar twin.” A team from Lowell Observatory and Tennessee ...

SN 2024abfl, a low-luminosity Type IIP supernova in the galaxy NGC 2146. This rare find is shedding new light on how stars ...

High-brightness LEDs, or HB-LEDs, are semiconductor-based devices that feature higher luminosity than traditional LEDs, and they can withstand higher current levels and power dissipation. These LEDs ...