She noticed that a type of star known as a Cepheid variable (after the constellation Cepheus, where it first was identified) pulsated with a regular rhythm-a kind of stellar heartbeat.
The approaches include looking at supernovae and variable stars in distant galaxies and measuring how fast they're receding, as well as how far away they are.
Actual variable stars do exist, but Tabby's Star doesn't fit that profile, it's what's known as an F-type main-sequence star, and shouldn't behave anything like this.
In the early 1900s, astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt realized a class of stars called Cepheids pulsate, bright and dim, and every Cepheid that pulsates at the same rate has the same brightness.
'I have made an amazing discovery in connexion with the variable stars, ' he exclaimed. 'It will excite the whole astronomical world, and the world outside but little less.
'I am preparing a work on variable stars. There is one of these which I have exceptionally observed for several months, and on this my great theory is mainly based.
These are called Cepheid variables, and they were critically important, because it was known that the time it took them to pulse was directly related to their luminosity, how much energy they emitted.