“From this Hubble deduced that the Andromeda Nebula was not a nearby star cluster but rather an entire other galaxy, now called the Andromeda galaxy.” One star he saw was a Cepheid variable, a type small image of the Andromeda galaxy of star with a known, varying brightness that can be used to measure distances. He found that it contained stars just like the ones in our galaxy, only dimmer. “In 1923 Hubble trained the Hooker telescope on a hazy patch of sky called the Andromeda Nebula. Our galaxy, it was thought, was synonymous with the universe. The Hooker telescope, then the most powerful on Earth, had just been completed and installed after nearly a decade of work.Īs NASA explains in its biography, most of Hubble’s contemporaries believed “all the universe – the planets, the stars seen with the naked eye and with powerful telescopes, and fuzzy objects called nebulae – was contained within the Milky Way galaxy. Returning from France at the end of World War I, he did make his way to Mount Wilson, which at the time, the European Space Agency says, “was the centre of observational work underpinning the new astrophysics, later called cosmology”. While still finishing his doctorate, Hubble was offered a position at the prestigious Mount Wilson Observatory, in Pasadena, California, but he chose to join the army instead, reportedly sending a telegraph to the observatory’s founder, George Ellery Hale, saying “Regret cannot accept your invitation. The lure of science proved too strong, however, and he returned to the University of Chicago, studying astronomy and receiving his PhD in 1917. Credit: Johan Hagemeyer, Camera Portraits Carmel He returned to the US in 1913, but rather than practise law he found work teaching at a high school in Indiana.Įdwin Hubble: law’s loss was astronomy’s gain. Despite his interest in astronomy, he honoured a promise to his father and studied law. ![]() Studying mathematics and astronomy, he completed a science degree in 1910 before his scholastic and athletic achievements helped him become a Rhodes Scholar at Queen’s College, Oxford. Although a gifted student, in school he enjoyed more recognition as an athlete.Īn often repeated story has it that at his high school graduation in 1906, the school principal said “‘Edwin Hubble, I have watched you for four years and I have never seen you study for 10 minutes” – then handed him a scholarship to the University of Chicago. Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri, in 1889 and grew up in a suburb of Chicago. It was named after Edwin Powell Hubble, a brilliant scientist and colourful character who NASA describes as “one of the leading astronomers of the twentieth century” – but whose career in astronomy very nearly didn’t get off the ground. ![]() The discrepancies suggest that something - maybe dark energy or dark matter - is influencing the universe's expansion in ways not yet understood.The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from space shuttle Discovery on 24 April 1990 as a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency. A megaparsec is 3.3 million light-years, so this measurement means that for every 3.3 million light-years from Earth, a galaxy appears to be receding at 73 kilometers per second faster.Ī few months later, the same researchers found that more distant reaches of the universe seem to be expanding less quickly, at 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec. ![]() Last year, using the telescope named for Hubble, astronomers reported that the expansion is faster than expected - 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec, to be precise. Ninety years after the Hubble team reported its findings, scientists are still trying to understand how this expansion works. The discovery enabled the calculation of the age of the universe: about 13.7 billion years old. As the dough rises, all of the raisins move farther apart, but they're all still stuck in the same dough. To use a famous analogy, the galaxies are like raisins in the bread dough of the universe. What Hubble and his co-authors had observed was the very expansion of the universe itself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |