It’s official! Astronomers have discovered the closest and brightest Cepheid variable star to Earth—the star Polaris! This discovery has been made possible thanks to a new instrument called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which allowed astronomers to measure the distance to Polaris with unprecedented accuracy. Polaris is a special type of star called a Cepheid variable, which means it periodically varies in brightness over a period of several days. This makes Polaris an important tool in understanding the distance to far-away galaxies and the size of the universe. With this newfound knowledge, scientists will be able to uncover new secrets about the universe and our place in it.

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source: Phys.org