Hubble Space Telescope Returns to Namesake’s Discovery (Narrated)

Hubble Views the Star that Changed the Universe

Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been trained on a single variable star that in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had...

Star Field in M31 Imaged by Hubble WFC3

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the star field around the Cepheid variable V1 in M31. This two-color image shows individually resolved stars in the outer disk of the Andromeda Galaxy. The soft, brown swirls are dust lanes obscuring light from stars farther away from our...

Compass and Scale Image of Cepheid Variable V1 in M31

Snapshots of the Star that Changed the Universe

Views of a famous pulsating star taken nearly 90 years apart and a portrait of its galactic home are shown in this image collection. The pancake-shaped disk of stars, gas, and dust that make up the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is shown in the image at left. Andromeda is a Milky Way...

Light Curve of Cepheid Variable Star V1

This illustration shows the rhythmic rise and fall of starlight from the Cepheid variable star V1 over a seven-month period. Cepheid variables are pulsating stars that brighten and fade in a predictable pattern. The illustrated graph shows that V1 completes a pulsation cycle...

Hubble Space Telescope Returns to Namesake's Discovery (Unnarrated)

Less than a century ago, the bright arc of our Milky Way was thought to contain all the stars in the universe. But, astronomers were perplexed by a cigar-shaped object in the autumn sky called the Andromeda nebula. Some astronomers thought it was another galaxy like our Milky...