What relationship did Henrietta Swan Leavitt establish concerning Cepheid variables?
Answer
Longer pulsation period correlates with greater intrinsic brightness
Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the crucial Period-Luminosity Relation for Cepheid variables. This relationship is fundamental: the longer the time it took for the star to cycle from bright to dim and back again (the period), the intrinsically brighter the star actually was (its absolute magnitude). This discovery provided astronomy with the reliable method necessary to assign a true luminosity value to these distant, pulsating stars.
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