Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy.
The star goes by the inauspicious name of Hubble variable number one, or V1, and resides in the outer regions of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, or M31. But in the early 1900s, most astronomers considered the Milky Way a single "island universe" of stars, with nothing observable beyond its boundaries. Andromeda was cataloged as just one of many faint, fuzzy patches of light astronomers called "spiral nebulae."
Were these spiral nebulae part of the Milky Way or were they independent island universes lying outside our galaxy? Astronomers didn't know for sure, until Edwin Hubble found a star in Andromeda that brightened and faded in a predictable pattern, like a lighthouse beacon, and identified it as V1, a Cepheid variable. This special type of star had already been proven to be a reliable distance marker within our galaxy.
The star helped Hubble show that Andromeda was beyond our galaxy and settled the debate over the status of the spiral nebulae. The universe became a much bigger place after Hubble's discovery.
Image:
V1 is a special class of pulsating star called a Cepheid variable that can be used to make reliable measurements of large cosmic distances.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Source:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html
Reference:http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/star/2011/15/
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