What term describes standard celestial objects like Cepheids, whose intrinsic brightness is tied to a measurable timing property, used for gauging vast cosmic distances?
Answer
Standard candles
The method employed by Hubble bypassed geometric techniques like parallax, which fail over immense separations. Instead, he relied on objects whose true brightness is known, allowing their distance to be calculated solely by comparing this known intrinsic value (absolute magnitude) against their observed brightness (apparent magnitude). Such objects, whose absolute brightness is directly linked to a measurable characteristic like a pulsation period, are collectively referred to as standard candles. Cepheids function as critical standard candles on the cosmic distance ladder.
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