26.4 The extragalactic distance scale

Learning objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the use of variable stars to estimate distances to galaxies
• Explain how standard bulb s and the Tully-Fisher relation can be used to estimate distances to galaxies

To determine many of the properties of a galaxy, such as its luminosity or size, we must first know how far away it is. If we know the distance to a galaxy, we can convert how bright the galaxy appears to us in the sky into its true luminosity because we know the precise way light is dimmed by distance. (The same galaxy 10 times farther away, for example, would look 100 times dimmer.) But the measurement of galaxy distances is one of the most difficult problems in modern astronomy: all galaxies are far away, and most are so distant that we cannot even make out individual stars in them.

For decades after Hubble’s initial work, the techniques used to measure galaxy distances were relatively inaccurate, and different astronomers derived distances that differed by as much as a factor of two. (Imagine if the distance between your home or dorm and your astronomy class were this uncertain; it would be difficult to make sure you got to class on time.) In the past few decades, however, astronomers have devised new techniques for measuring distances to galaxies; most importantly, all of them give the same answer to within an accuracy of about 10%. As we will see, this means we may finally be able to make reliable estimates of the size of the universe.

Variable stars

Before astronomers could measure distances to other galaxies, they first had to establish the scale of cosmic distances using objects in our own Galaxy. We described the chain of these distance methods in Celestial Distances (and we recommend that you review that chapter if it has been a while since you’ve read it). Astronomers were especially delighted when they discovered that they could measure distances using certain kinds of intrinsically luminous variable stars , such as cepheids, which can be seen at very large distances ( [link] ).

After the variables in nearby galaxies had been used to make distance measurements for a few decades, Walter Baade showed that there were actually two kinds of cepheids and that astronomers had been unwittingly mixing them up. As a result, in the early 1950s, the distances to all of the galaxies had to be increased by about a factor of two. We mention this because we want you to bear in mind, as you read on, that science is always a study in progress. Our first tentative steps in such difficult investigations are always subject to future revision as our techniques become more reliable.

The amount of work involved in finding cepheids and measuring their periods can be enormous. Hubble, for example, obtained 350 long-exposure photographs of the Andromeda galaxy over a period of 18 years and was able to identify only 40 cepheids. Even though cepheids are fairly luminous stars, they can be detected in only about 30 of the nearest galaxies with the world’s largest ground-based telescopes.