standard candle

British  

noun

1. a unit of luminous intensity; the candela: not in scientific usage because of possible confusion with a former unit (international candle) See also candela international candle

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Example Sentences

Wendy Freedman, an astronomer at the University of Chicago, uses a certain class of red giant stars as her preferred standard candle.

From Scientific American • Jan. 25, 2022

The maps provided not a standard candle, but a standard yardstick: a pattern of hotter and colder spots in the primordial soup created by sound waves rippling through the newborn universe.

From Science Magazine • Mar. 8, 2017

Astronomy's most reliable light bulb, or, to use the preferred and quainter term, standard candle, is a type of star called a Cepheid variable, whose inherent brightness can be easily calculated.

From Time Magazine Archive

To test the distance of the spiral nebulae, a class of intrinsically much brighter variable stars was needed to furnish a new standard candle.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

Shapley had found a stellar standard candle, a star noticeable because of its variability, but which had always the same average intrinsic brightness.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan