Besides confirming theories about the source of some short - duration gamma - ray bursts and the formation mechanism of many of the heavy elements including platinum, lead, gold, and rare earth elements, the gravitational waves enabled us to get a distance to the galaxy independent of the usual step - by - step procedure called the «distance scale ladder». (astronomynotes.com)
Incredibly, the new distance scale works over a factor of more than six powers of ten in surface brightness. (sciencedaily.com)
This extragalactic distance scale Key Project aims to discover Cepheids and measure the distances to galaxies in order to determine an accurate value of the Hubble Constant. (hubblesite.org)