RR Lyrae Variable - Abundances and Distribution

Abundances and Distribution

RR Lyrae stars were formerly called "cluster variables" because of their strong (but not exclusive) association with globular clusters; conversely, about 90% of all variables known in globular clusters are RR Lyraes. RR Lyrae stars are found at all galactic latitudes, as opposed to classical Cepheid variables, which are strongly associated with the galactic plane.

Several times as many RR Lyraes are known as all Cepheids combined; in the 1980s, about 1900 were known in globular clusters. Some estimates have about 85000 in the Milky Way.

Read more about this topic:  RR Lyrae Variable

Famous quotes containing the word distribution:

    The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)