redshift

noun

red·shift | \ ˈred-ˈshift

Definition of redshift

: a displacement of the spectrum of a celestial body toward longer wavelengths that is a consequence of the Doppler effect or the gravitational field of the source also : a measurement of a celestial body's redshift equal to the ratio of the displacement of a spectral line to its known unshifted wavelength and used especially to calculate the body's distance from earth

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Examples of redshift in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web If space expanded at a constant rate, a supernova’s redshift would be directly proportional to its distance, and thus to its brightness. — Quanta Magazine, "No Dark Energy? No Chance, Cosmologists Contend," 17 Dec. 2019 The greater the redshift, the farther away the object. — Anil Ananthaswamy, Scientific American, "How Heavy is the Universe? Conflicting Answers Hint at New Physics," 12 May 2020 That was first confirmed with the measurement of a redshift in the starlight of a white dwarf star in 1954. — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, "Einstein wins again: Star orbits black hole just like GR predicts," 16 Apr. 2020 Indeed, researchers find that the redshift and brightness of supernovas scales in just this way. — Quanta Magazine, "No Dark Energy? No Chance, Cosmologists Contend," 17 Dec. 2019 Some of the most distant objects astronomers study can only be seen in infrared due to a phenomenon called redshift. — Lily Katzman, Smithsonian Magazine, "Spitzer’s 16 Years of Scanning the Cosmos," 31 Jan. 2020 At this time, the redshift effect is particularly notable as the gravitational pull of Sagittarius A* grows stronger when the star moves closer. — Emily Toomey, Smithsonian, "A Star Orbiting in the Extreme Gravity of a Black Hole Validates General Relativity," 25 July 2019 This wavelength increase, known as a redshift, is associated on a stellar level with age. — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, "This Supercomputer Is Out Here Just Generating Millions of Universes," 13 Aug. 2019 To get a distance to a galaxy, astronomers split its light into a spectrum and measure its redshift, or the stretching of its light by the expansion of the universe. — Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, "Robot detector to map cosmos for clues to dark energy," 11 Sep. 2019

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