What Makes White-Dwarf Supernovae Very Good Standard Candles for Distance

question 127

Multiple Choice

What makes white-dwarf supernovae very good standard candles for distance measurements?

• A) They are very bright, so they can be used to determine the distances to galaxies billions of light-years away.
• B) They should all have approximately the same luminosity.
• C) They occur so frequently that we can use them to measure the distances to virtually all galaxies.
• D) We have had several occur close to us in the Milky Way, so we have been able to determine their luminosities very accurately.
• E) both A and B

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Definitions:

Sample

A subset of individuals, items, or data extracted from a larger population, used for the purpose of analysis to infer conclusions about the population.

Frequency Distribution

A frequency distribution illustrates the frequency with which each unique value appears within a dataset.

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