期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1999
卷号:96
期号:20
页码:11063-11064
DOI:10.1073/pnas.96.20.11063
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Establishing accurate extragalactic distances has provided an immense challenge to astronomers since the 1920s. The situation has improved dramatically as better detectors have become available, and as several new, promising techniques have been developed. For the first time in the history of this difficult field, relative distances to galaxies are being compared on a case-by-case basis, and their quantitative agreement is being established. New instrumentation, the development of new techniques for measuring distances, and recent measurements with the Hubble Space telescope all have resulted in new distances to galaxies with precision at the {+/-}5-20% level. The current statistical uncertainty in some methods for measuring H0 is now only a few percent; with systematic errors, the total uncertainty is approaching {+/-}10%. Hence, the historical factor-of-two uncertainty in the value of the H0 is now behind us.