Hey Space Placers!
A new and powerful technique for measuring the distance to a key “standard candle” called Cepheid variable stars was just announced:
“Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers now can precisely measure the distance of stars up to 10,000 light-years away -- 10 times farther than previously possible.”
“Astronomers have developed yet another novel way to use the 24-year-old space telescope by employing a technique called spatial scanning, which dramatically improves Hubble’s accuracy for making angular measurements. The technique, when applied to the age-old method for gauging distances called astronomical parallax, extends Hubble’s tape measure 10 times farther into space.”
This capability will help astronomers further refine the rate at which the Universe is expanding. This in turn will help in the search for Dark Energy, the force that is causing the expansion to accelerate.
Read More About It Here:
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