News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on How Do We Measure the Distance to a Star?.

Re:How Do We Measure the Distance to a Star? by crazydoggers on Monday August 20, 2018 @02:53PM (#17802726)
Parallax is not the only way. Cepheid variables are also used, I think more so than parallax, since parallax is only accurate for somewhat nearby stars.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheid_variable

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Do We Measure the Distance to a Star? by antognini on Monday August 20, 2018 @03:26PM (#17803045)
Yes, but Cepheids are calibrated, fundamentally, by parallax. (I believe that no Cepheids were actually close enough to be calibrated directly by parallax, at least until Gaia, so they had to be calibrated by other techniques which were, in turn, calibrated by parallax.)
[ Parent | on HN ]