Two astronomers, a hundred years apart, use stars to measure the universe

On: January 10, 2018

Our entire understanding of the universe is based on knowing the distances to other galaxies, yet this seemingly-simple question turns out to be fiendishly difficult to answer. The best answer came more than 100 years ago from an astronomer who was mostly unrecognized in her time—and today, another astronomer has used Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data to make those distance measurements more precise than ever.

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