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  1. AkaSci 🛰️ (akasci@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 05-Jul-2024 07:06:28 UTC AkaSci 🛰️ AkaSci 🛰️

    Happy Birthday to American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (born July 4, 1868, Lancaster, MA, died Dec 12, 1921, Cambridge, MA), who discovered the relationship between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variables - pulsating stars that vary in brightness in precise periods ranging from a few days to several months.
    The period–luminosity relationship, now known as "Leavitt's law," led to methods to calculate vast celestial distances.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt
    #Leavitt
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    In conversation about 6 months ago from fosstodon.org permalink

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    2. Henrietta Swan Leavitt
      Henrietta Swan Leavitt (; July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. Her discovery of how to effectively measure vast distances to remote galaxies led to a shift in the scale and understanding of the scale and the nature of the universe. Nomination of Leavitt for the Nobel Prize had to be halted because of her death. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a human computer, tasked with measuring photographic plates to catalog the positions and brightness of stars. This work led her to discover the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variables. Leavitt's discovery provided astronomers with the first standard candle with which to measure the distance to other galaxies. Before Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables (sometimes referred to as Leavitt's Law), the only techniques available to astronomers for measuring the distance to a star were based on stellar parallax. Such techniques can only be used for measuring distances out to several hundred light years. Leavitt's great insight was that while no...

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