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Andromeda galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy. The compact nucleus of our nearest large galactic neighbor is seen at the center of this visible light image, with the blue spiral arms and thick dust lanes circling around the outer parts of the galaxy.
Also known by its catalog number M31, the Andromeda galaxy is a large spiral galaxy very similar in appearance to, and slightly larger than, our own Galaxy. At a distance of about 2.5 million light-years, Andromeda is the spiral galaxy that is nearest to our own in space. Here, it is seen with two of its satellite galaxies, M32 (top) and M110 (bottom). (credit: Adam Evans)

No one in human history had ever measured a distance so great. When Hubble’s paper on the distances to nebulae was read before a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on the first day of 1925, the entire room erupted in a standing ovation. A new era had begun in the study of the universe, and a new scientific field—extragalactic astronomy—had just been born.

Edwin hubble: expanding the universe

The son of a Missouri insurance agent, Edwin Hubble ( [link] ) graduated from high school at age 16. He excelled in sports, winning letters in track and basketball at the University of Chicago, where he studied both science and languages. Both his father and grandfather wanted him to study law, however, and he gave in to family pressure. He received a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University in England, where he studied law with only middling enthusiasm. Returning to be the United States, he spent a year teaching high school physics and Spanish as well as coaching basketball, while trying to determine his life’s direction.

Edwin hubble (1889–1953).

Photograph of Edwin Hubble.
Edwin Hubble established some of the most important ideas in the study of galaxies.

The pull of astronomy eventually proved too strong to resist, and so Hubble went back to the University of Chicago for graduate work. Just as he was about to finish his degree and accept an offer to work at the soon-to be completed 5-meter telescope, the United States entered World War I, and Hubble enlisted as an officer. Although the war had ended by the time he arrived in Europe, he received more officer’s training abroad and enjoyed a brief time of further astronomical study at Cambridge before being sent home.

In 1919, at age 30, he joined the staff at Mount Wilson and began working with the world’s largest telescope. Ripened by experience, energetic, disciplined, and a skillful observer, Hubble soon established some of the most important ideas in modern astronomy. He showed that other galaxies existed, classified them on the basis of their shapes, found a pattern to their motion (and thus put the notion of an expanding universe on a firm observational footing), and began a lifelong program to study the distribution of galaxies in the universe. Although a few others had glimpsed pieces of the puzzle, it was Hubble who put it all together and showed that an understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe was feasible.

His work brought Hubble much renown and many medals, awards, and honorary degrees. As he became better known (he was the first astronomer to appear on the cover of Time magazine), he and his wife enjoyed and cultivated friendships with movie stars and writers in Southern California. Hubble was instrumental (if you’ll pardon the pun) in the planning and building of the 2.5-meter telescope on Palomar Mountain, and he had begun to use it for studying galaxies when he passed away from a stroke in 1953.

When astronomers built a space telescope that would allow them to extend Hubble’s work to distances he could only dream about, it seemed natural to name it in his honor. It was fitting that observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (and his foundational work on expansion of the universe) contributed to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, given for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (a topic we will expand upon in the chapter on The Big Bang ).

Key concepts and summary

Faint star clusters, clouds of glowing gas, and galaxies all appeared as faint patches of light (or nebulae) in the telescopes available at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was only when Hubble measured the distance to the Andromeda galaxy using cepheid variables with the giant 2.5-meter reflector on Mount Wilson in 1924 that the existence of other galaxies similar to the Milky Way in size and content was established.

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Source:  OpenStax, Astronomy. OpenStax CNX. Apr 12, 2017 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11992/1.13
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