“A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to the maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods.”

—  Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1912HarCi.173....1L (1912)
Context: A remarkable relation between the brightness of these [Cepheid] variables and the length of their periods will be noticed. In H. A. 60, No.4, attention was called to the fact that the brighter variables have the longer periods, but at that time it was felt that the number was too small the drawing of general conclusions. The periods of 8 additional variables which have been determined since that time, however, conform to the same law. The relation is shown graphically in Figure 1... The two resulting curves, one for the maxima and one for the minima, are surprisingly smooth, and of remarkable form. In Figure 2, the abscissas are equal to the logarithms of the periods, and the ordinates to the corresponding magnitudes, as in Figure 1. A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to the maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods. The logarithm of the period increases by about 0.48 for each increase of one magnitude in brightness.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to the maxima and minima, thu…" by Henrietta Swan Leavitt?
Henrietta Swan Leavitt photo
Henrietta Swan Leavitt 8
astronomer 1868–1921

Related quotes

Hans Reichenbach photo

“Common to the two geometries is only the general property of one-to-one correspondence, and the rule that this correspondence determines straight lines as shortest lines as well as their relations of intersection.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

Will Durant photo

“In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

Theodor W. Adorno photo

“The straight line is regarded as the shortest distance between two people, as if they were points.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Nun gilt für die kürzeste Verbindung zwischen zwei Personen die Gerade, so als ob sie Punkte wären.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20
Minima Moralia (1951)

Henrietta Swan Leavitt photo

“Apparently no sharp dividing line can be drawn between true Algol stars and those whose variations are continuous. Periods of nine variables in this region, which are of the Algol type or closely resemble it, have been determined and are here discussed.”

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921) astronomer

"Ten Variable Stars of the Algol Type" (1908) Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College Vol.60. No.5

George Pólya photo

“The differential equation of the first order
\frac {dy}{dx} = f(x, y)
… prescribes the slope \frac {dy}{dx} at each point of the plane (or at each point of a certain region of the plane we call the field")…. a differential equation of the first order… can be conceived intuitively as a problem about the steady flow of a river: Being given the direction of the flow at each point, find the streamlines…. It leaves open the choice between the two possible directions in the line of a given slope. Thus… we should say specifically "direction of an unoriented straight line" and not merely "direction."”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Helen Thomas photo

“I don't speechify. I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. I just want to ask a tough question.”

Helen Thomas (1920–2013) American author and journalist

Interview by Adam Holdorf for Real Change News, (18 March 2004).

Simone Weil photo

“The materialists say, it is by means of a series of straight lines more or less perfect that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. That is right, but the progression in itself necessarily contains what is infinite; it is in relation to the perfect straight line that one can say that such and such a straight line is less twisted than some other. … Either one conceives the infinite or one does not conceive at all.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 87

“These formulae [in (1) and (2) above] may be shown to be valid for a circle or a triangle in the hyperbolic plane… for which K < 0. Accordingly here the perimeter and area of a circle are greater, and the sum of the three angles of a triangle are less, than the corresponding quantities in the Euclidean plane. It can also be shown that each full line is of infinite length, that through a given point outside a given line an infinity of full lines may be drawn which do not meet the given line (the two lines bounding the family are said to be "parallel" to the given line), and that two full lines which meet do so in but one point.”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo

“Morality has got nothing to do with the politicians. Simply, because the straight line is considered by them as the longest distance between the two points.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Related topics