Edwin hubble research on galaxies12/31/2023 ![]() ![]() Einstein visited Hubble in 1931 to acknowledge that Hubble's work had helped him to rectify his error. ![]() Hubble's observations caused Einstein to retract his invention of a "cosmological constant" he had introduced to make the universe static and immobile. Modern astronomy has rectified this, and Hubble's discoveries form the basis of modern cosmology. His initial calculation of the constant was in error and made the Milky Way appear larger than all other galaxies. In 1929 he refined this finding by showing that the universe was expanding in such a way that the ratio of the speed of the galaxies to their distance is a constant, now called Hubble's constant. Hubble then concentrated on the determination of distances of galaxies and observed in 1927 that all galaxies were receding from the Milky Way. The announcement of this finding in 1924 led to a revision of astronomical theory. This allowed him to show that these galaxies were not part of the Milky Way, as was believed at the time, but several hundred thousand light-years away. He discovered that some nebulae contained pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, for which the correlation between the period of pulsation and absolute magnitude of luminosity was already established. After return from duty during World War I he worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Pasadena in California, studying the properties of galaxies. in 1912 and returned to the USA to establish a legal practice in Kentucky.įinding himself bored with law, Hubble returned to university to study astronomy at the University of Chicago. ![]() The young Hubble excelled in athletics, boxing and basketball but was academically good enough to receive a Rhodes scholarship for Oxford University, where he studied law. 28 September 1953 (San Marino, Ca.).Įdwin Hubble's family moved from Missouri, where Edwin was born, to Chicago when Edwin was nine years old. 20 November 1889 (Marshfield, Mo, USA), d. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City.Science, civilization and society Edwin Powell HubbleĪstronomer b. Nevertheless, he now has a bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians on the third floor of the State Capitol in Jefferson City ( fifth image), very near that of Missouri's beloved regional artist, Thomas Hart Benton. Hubble left Missouri before he was 10 years old and rarely came back. The first four images show: Hubble at the eyepiece of the 100” telescope at Mount Wilson, which opened in 1918 a detail of a photograph of the Andromeda galaxy, taken by the 100” telescope Hubble and staff entertaining a visitor (Hubble is once removed from Einstein, at the far right) and Hubble as he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on the occasion of the opening of Mount Palomar Observatory. It was only after his death in 1953 that astronomers started to credit the expansion to Hubble and began to call his distance-redshift law, “Hubble’s law.” But even without the expanding universe in his portfolio, Hubble is one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century, and he well deserved to have the Hubble Space Telescope named in his honor. But in fact Hubble did no such thing, and he never claimed to have done so. Since a galactic redshift might be caused by a galaxy’s motion away from us (and that is how Hubble’s law is now commonly understood), it is often said that Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929-perhaps the greatest cosmological discovery of the century. Hubble is best known for announcing (on New Year’s Day, 1925), that the Andromeda nebula is actually an external galaxy, as big as our Milky Way Galaxy, and for publishing in 1929 what has come to be called Hubble’s law, which states that the more distant a galaxy, the larger its redshift. Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer, was born Nov. ![]()
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