The Large Magellanic Cloud played an important role in determining the distance to nearby galaxies. In 1912, while studying it, Henrietta S. Leavitt discovered an amazing property of a particular class of stars, known as Cepheid Variables. The average brightness of these stars, Leavitt deduced, is directly related to the period of time over which they vary: brighter Cepheids vary more quickly than dimmer ones.
Henrietta LeavittΓÇÖs discovery of this ΓÇ£period-luminosityΓÇ¥ relation allowed astronomers to determine the distances to other galaxies, as long as the galaxies were close enough to resolve individual Cepheid variables within them. By determining the period over which Cepheids vary in brightness,
