After precise measurements of a rare class of binary stars, astronomers have improved the measurement of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy. With this information, they were also able to refine the Hubble Constant which helps in measuring the expansion of the Universe. They believe it is a push in the right direction to understanding dark energy, the cause of the accelerated expansion of the Universe.
The new calculated distance is 163,000 light-years, which is about one and a half times the distance of the length of our Milky Way. Don't plan on visiting this galaxy any time soon, remember that a light year is the distance light travels in one year, (300000000 meters/sec)x(365 days)x(24 hours/day)x(60 minutes/hour)x(60 seconds/minute) = 9.4608x10^15 meters = 1 light-year. That's a lot of meters, now imagine 163,000 of those and even if you were traveling at the speed of light, it would still take 163,000 years to get there which is on the time scale of the earliest human remains ever found. There are a couple dwarf galaxies closer to home though; the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy and the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, 42 and 50 thousands light years away from the Galactic Center, respectively.
Astronomers can measure the distances to nearby objects then use this information to compare to further objects that are similar. Similar to knowing how bright a light bulb is, moving it away from you and measuring the brightness again. It will dim based on how far away it is and we can measure that in objects in the sky.
Accurately measuring the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud has always been difficult, yet important because stars in this galaxy are used to compare to other stars in regions further out in space. Astronomers were able to closely observe a pair of stars orbiting each other that also eclipsed each other to our point of view like the Sun and the Moon, except thousands of light years away. By measuring the changes in the brightness of the two stars as they eclipsed each other, along with other information on the orbits, masses, and colors of the stars, they achieved a very accurate distance for the pair of stars.
They say their results are accurate to 2% of the actual distance and hope to cut that in half in the next few years.
Beautiful Image above from http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000Uxdp0In8UQY/s/860/860/LMC-Large-Magellanic-Cloud-135mm-5DII.jpg
