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What is a Cepheid variable?

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Relatively rare among this subclass are the Cepheid variables ; these yellow supergiant stars are historically important because, having periods roughly proportional to their absolute brightness, they provide a means of measuring galactic and extragalactic distances. A key research program of the Hubble Space Telescope is the measurement of Cepheid variables in distant galaxies in order to refine our concept of the size and age of the universe. Cepheid variables are classed as either population I Cepheids, which are found in the spiral arms of galaxies, or population II Cepheids, also known as W Virginis stars, which are found in star clusters ...

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