What is a Cepheid Star?

About Cepheid Star:

• It is a type of variable star which brigthen and dim periodically.
• Variable stars are essentially stars that experience fluctuations in their brightness.
• Cepheids stars are special type of variable star in that they are hot and massive – five to twenty times as much mass as our Sun – and are known for their tendency to pulsate radially and vary in both diameter and temperature.
• Cepheid star’s period (how often it pulsates) is directly related to its luminosity or brightness.
• They have luminosities 500-30,000 times greater than that of the Sun.
• They are used as cosmic yardsticks out to distances of a few tens of millions of light-years.

Q1) What is a pulsar?

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that blast out pulses of radiation at regular intervals ranging from seconds to milliseconds. Pulsars have strong magnetic fields that funnel particles along their magnetic poles accelerating them to relativistic speeds, which produces two powerful beams of light, one from each pole.

Source: A new measurement could change understanding of the Universe: Study

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