December 13, 2010 • 17 mins
The study of the heavens is one of humanity's oldest pursuits, and it's still a work in progress. In this episode, Deblina and Sarah explore the details of five amazing astronomical discoveries, beginning with the work of Copernicus.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm doubling a chocolate boarding And
this episode is kind of related to one that we
did recently on Tico bra Hays untimely demise, and in
(00:23):
that episode we touched on his achievements in the field
of astronomy, as well as those of well known astronomers
Johannes Kepler and Nicholas Copernicus. Yeah, but even though those
three names are often linked together, they're not all exactly contemporaries. Actually,
Chico and Coupler were contemporaries, but Copernicus died three years
before Tico was even born. But because of their work,
(00:45):
they're really closely connected, at least to a degree exactly.
Copernicus began writing about his heliocentric theory of the universe
and the early fifteen hundreds, and he published a book
about his ideas in fifteen forty three or so, around
in the year that he died. Um. But this theory,
what it was is it essentially proposed that the Sun
(01:06):
as the center of the universe, that the Earth, any
other planets revolved around the Sun, and this was a
really controversial idea at the time since people previously had
believed the Earth was at the center of the universe
and was stationary. Yeah, I mean, now we know that
Copernicus was right, but it was controversial at the time. Kepler,
of course, from the previous episode, Kepler is actually the
(01:27):
one who confirmed this helio centric model using Tica's data.
That's how they all fit together. Um. Even though ironically
Tico didn't even agree with copernicus model. No, not at all.
He had his own theory about the universe UM and
actually another discovery, rather significant discovery of his own. He
(01:47):
spotted a supernova in the constellation of Cassiopeia in fifteen
seventy two. He thought at the time, and most people
thought at the time that it was just a new star.
Of course, now we know that a supernova is the
explosion of a dying star, but it was still considered
pretty significant and also controversial at the time. But what
was probably most amazing about the observations that were done
(02:08):
up to this point by Tico and others is that
they were done pretty much with the naked eye. They
had some instruments, but they're pretty much going going solo
and uh, the work of the first astronomer on this
list though, kind of change that. Yeah, you can imagine
if you start bringing in some tools, you're gonna have
an explosion and discovery. Right, So the first discovery we're
(02:29):
gonna look at was made by a guy who you
might have heard of, Sarah, I'm not sure. His name's Galileo.
Galileo also my favorite search engine for finding out all
of this historical information. So true now. Galileo was an
Italian astronomer born fifteen sixty four died sixteen forty two,
(02:50):
and he was also known for his contributions in mathematics
and science. He was the first astronomer to use a telescope,
so that's kind of what we're referring to before. He
wasn't the inventor of the telescope, we should point that out.
He was just the first user for astronomical purposes. And
he actually constructed the first know and complete astronomical telescope,
which was basically a crude refracting telescope with a convex
(03:13):
objective lens and a cave eyepiece and a long tube, which,
not to discredit Galileo, but it seems like somebody might
have put together such a simple device before this point.
But you know, with this new contraption he is able
to observe a lot and make a lot of new discoveries.
And one of the most significant observations was that of
(03:36):
the Milky Way, which of course is the galaxy we
live in and that's how we know it now. Um.
He observed that the Milky Ways composed of billions of
individual stars, and until this point people just sort of
saw it as this band of bright light going across
the sky. They didn't realize what it was actually made of. Yes,
(03:58):
the Greeks called the light Galaxius Kuklos or milk circle.
But when Galileo turned his telescope on it, this fancy
new device that he had, he realized that the stars
were actually emitting the light that people had seen for
so many years, and no one had figured this out
before because the stars were just too faint or distant
to be seen with the naked eye. Yeah, you could
(04:20):
just see their collective star shine, not the individual bodies.
And later astronomers, who had stronger instruments to work with,
they were able to expand on this knowledge and determine
the galaxy shape, its composition and so forth. But um,
but Galileo kind of started it by figuring out what
(04:41):
was there in the first place. Yeah. So that's his
most famous contribution to uh astronomy, probably, but he's got
a lot of other impressive contributions which also stemmed from
having this new device. He discovered that the Moon had
this cratery, mountainous surface, and he observed four moons of
(05:02):
Jupiter and observed the phases of Venus and sun spots,
which sounds kind of dangerous looking at the Sun with
your new telescope, Galileo, But I don't know. Um. And
of course all of these findings helped really confirm that
Copernican view that the Sun was at the center of
our solar system. Yep, it all comes back to Copernicus
(05:24):
again and again. This idea. Copernicus idea is causing controversy
because Galileo later published works in support of the Copernican system,
and that's what famously got him in trouble with the
Church eventually, because the Church decided in sixteen sixteen that
the Copernican system was dangerous to faith, and so Galileo,
(05:45):
as many know was forced to live out the rest
of his days in seclusion. But fortunately we have other
astronomers on our list. Yes, the next one is Edmund Haley,
who you may have heard his name before as well. Yeah,
I think pretty much everyone knows what he's famous for,
but we'll give you a little background on him anyway.
(06:06):
And then Haley was an English astronomer and mathematician who
was born in sixteen fifty six and died in seventeen
forty two. And he was fortunate enough to live during
a time of scientific revolution, unlike a lot of the
astronomers that we looked we've looked at here, like Galleo, right,
and he was actually encouraged to study astronomy and it
didn't it didn't take too long for him to make
(06:26):
a name for himself in the field. Yeah. So when
he was only about twenty years old, it was sixteen
seventy six, sixteen seventy eight, he cataloged the celestial longitudes
and latitudes of three hundred and forty one stars and remarkably,
that was the first work of its kind about stars
in the southern hemisphere. People knew a lot about what
(06:47):
was going on in the top half the globe, but
not so much about the southern hemisphere. And he was
good buddies with Isaac Newton too in the sixteen eighties,
and he even assisted Newton in publishing his influential work
The Principia. Later, Haley even became Astronomer Royal in seventeen twenty.
But as we mentioned before, he's most well known for
(07:10):
a certain achievement in observational astronomy that involves comments. Yeah,
his work started when he studied the parabolic orbits of
twenty four comets that had been observed from thirteen thirty
seven to sixteen ninety eight, and he published these findings
in a work called The Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets.
And he made a really amazing discovery in that work
(07:33):
that three of these historic comments when from fifteen thirty one,
sixteen o seven and sixteen eighty two, which is that
last one is the one that he observed personally. He
realized that they were so similar that they had to
have been the same comment. And from that he realized
that well, the comment was due back again right. The
(07:57):
thing that really clinched it is that he accurately predicted
the rich her and have said comment in seventeen fifty eight,
and he didn't live to see it, unfortunately, But today
it's known as Haley's comment, so he did receive credit
for his discovery. Yeah, Devlena and I were talking about
it earlier, but we are not the right age for
Haley's comment. Yeah, I'm kind of bummed about that. Way
(08:18):
too young, or we'll be really old next time I
come through. Theoretically we could have seen it in eighty six,
but I wouldn't have remembered if I did. Unfortunately, Apparently
to the eighties, six comment pass was not a very
impressive one, so maybe we didn't miss that much. Well
they did, I think managed to collect a lot of
data about it. Yeah, so there's something all right. Well,
(08:41):
the next entry on our list didn't just discover a comment.
I think he did one better than that. Yeah, he
discovered an entire planet. And we are talking about Sir
William Herschel, who was a German born British astronomer born
seventeen thirty eight died in eighteen twenty two. And he
actually I find this really interesting. He started out as
(09:01):
a musician and he played the oboe, and music is
what eventually led him through an interest in mathematics and
in lenses, which eventually led him then to astronomy. But
like the others on this list, Herschel was known for
making several contributions to astronomy, So before we talk about
his major discovery, will mention a few of those. He
(09:22):
studied binary stars in nebula, and he theorized that nebula
are composed of stars and so, like I said, these
are just a couple of the many, many observations that
he made. But he's also known for having kind of
a crazy theory definitely, yeah, a little bit out there.
He thought that life existed on all planets and the Sun.
(09:42):
In fact, the clincher, Yeah, that's kind of the really
wacky one. He thought that He thought that this was
possible because the Sun had a cool surface, and that
the heat that a cool solid surface yep, And that
the heat that came from it actually emanated from the atmosphere,
but that there was a layer of clouds in between
(10:02):
the atmosphere and the ground that protected the people who
live inhabitants. But I don't know if he thought they
were people. Maybe, so an interesting idea but generally considered
to be a little out there, But what he's best
known for, as we mentioned, is discovering the seventh planet
(10:24):
Uranus in one and he discovered the planet while he
was doing a survey of all the stars that were
about ten times dimmer than those that you could see
with the naked eye. And other astronomers had of course
observed Uranus before, but they thought it was a star.
He realized that it was something other than a star
(10:44):
because it was a disc shape, which is not a
stellar attribute. And this was a really big deal. I
mean not just because it's a new planet, but because
up until that point there was this consensus among scientists
that there were only sick planets. There was Earth and
then five planets that had been observed as long as
(11:05):
recorded history. And that change, you know, the the admission
that there could be new planets really opened up astronomers
to go look for others. And this paved the way
for the discovery of Neptune in eighteen forty six by
Johann gal So. I mean, it's a big change not
just in what astronomers knew, but what they were willing
to believe. Absolutely. The next person on this list also
(11:30):
had an interesting discovery that um that kind of changed
the way people perceived the universe. And we're talking about
Justesseepi Piazzi, who was an Italian astronomer born seventeen forty
six died eighteen twenty six, and he was also interestingly
a Theatin monk and a professor of theology. He became
(11:50):
a mathematics professor at the Academy of Palermo in seventeen
eighty and he also founded the Observatory of Palermo, which
is where he did a lot of his work. And
it is there that he catalogued seven thousand and six
hundred and forty six stars, which to me is just
an amazing huge number of stars. But most significantly, in
eighteen o one, he discovered and named the first asteroids,
(12:13):
Series Yeah, and he took three separate observations of it
and worked on calculating its orbit and did so with
surprising accuracy, so much so that the following year his
predictions of its position turned out to be accurate. Um
So Series has a mass of one one hundred thousand
(12:36):
that of Earth, so it's really small compared to a planet,
but it's huge compared to you know, your average asteroid.
In fact, it's the biggest, most massive asteroid in the
asteroid belt that's between Mars and Jupiter. Right. It's so
big that at the time he called it, he people
thought it was a minor planet of sorts. Um. Of course,
(12:58):
after a few years, I think about eighteen fifty, it's
classification changed to asteroid UM because many other asteroids were
found thanks to his discovery, and they were identified and UM,
and so that allowed again a new sort of perception
of the universe. And and then in two thousand and six,
(13:18):
after the controversy the big hullabaloo over Pluto is in
a planet or not? Yep, um, Pluto got downgraded and
Serious kind of got upgraded. It was reclassified as a
dwarf planet. Yeah, I guess, because if Pluto isn't going
to be a planet, then Serious needs a little booth.
So from this point we're gonna go extra galactic and
(13:39):
go beyond our own Solar system at last. And it's
Edwin Powell Hubble who takes us there. He's an American astronomer.
Eighteen eighty nine is when he was born, and he
died in nineteen fifty three. And he started out a
lot like Tico. If you listen to that podcast, then
you'll know that Tico started out studying all because his uncle,
(14:01):
who's basically like a father to him, had raised him
pressured him to do so. But he was always interested
um in astronomy and was kind of studying it on
the sly all the time. And um Hubble was a
lot the same way. He he was studying law at
the insistence of his father. But then finally when his
father died in nineteen thirteen, he got his chance to
(14:21):
pursue a graduate degree in astronomy. Yeah, even though he
had another delay with the onset of World War One,
But finally after the war is over, he was able
to make up for all this lost time and really
get to making some serious observations. Yep. And he was
working at Mount Wilson Observatory in California and studying spiral nebula,
(14:44):
which is what he had done his doctorate on. These
were problematic because nobody could tell exactly what the spirals were.
Were they other star systems, were they clouds of gas
within or near the Milky Way? What were they? Nobody knew.
So his research led to the discovery that there are
in fact other galaxies that exist outside in the Milky Way,
and this was kind of known as his major contribution. Um.
(15:07):
He pulled this achievement off by studying variable stars in
the Andromeda nebula and using the fluctuations of light and
these stars to kind of figure out the nebulous distance,
and he found out that that distance was nine thousand
light years away, which was far beyond the borders of
the Milky Way. Yeah, and so his fines with the
Andromeda nebula and other spiral nebula convinced a lot of
(15:30):
astronomers that the universe was made out of multiple galaxies.
There wasn't just hours, there were countless galaxies, and the
Andromeda nebula is of course now known as the Andromeda
galaxy appropriately enough. And um, it's interesting. But later he
even proposed a theory for why the majority of these
(15:51):
external galaxies appeared to be moving away from us, moving
away from Earth. Later he even proposed a theory about
why I it seemed the majority of external galaxies were
moving away from Earth, you know, moving away from where
we are. And so that was sort of the key
to the establishment of extra galactic astronomy, and of course,
(16:13):
the Hubble Space Telescope which launched into space in nineteen
ninety and has led to so many more discoveries, was
named for him. Yeah, we have an article on the Hubble.
We do have an article on how the Hubble Space
telescope works, and um many astronomy articles actually, so we're
pretty stoffed in this department, yep. And so while we've
(16:35):
wrapped up today's list, you can continue to find out
a lot more about what discoveries were made about space
and explore that. Yeah, and also, I mean, I know
we've only covered five amazing astronomical discovery and I'm sure
there are many more favorites you have, And you can
email us at History podcast at how stuff works dot
(16:57):
com or find us on Twitter and mr History or
on Facebook, and I don't know, throw in your vote
for your favorite astronomical discover the Rings of Saturn, Pluto.
Tell us what your favorites are. And again, if you
want to look up those astronomy articles we mentioned, you
can find them by visiting our homepage and typing an
(17:18):
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a rise. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm doubling a chocolate boarding And
this episode is kind of related to one that we
did recently on Tico bra Hays untimely demise, and in
(00:23):
that episode we touched on his achievements in the field
of astronomy, as well as those of well known astronomers
Johannes Kepler and Nicholas Copernicus. Yeah, but even though those
three names are often linked together, they're not all exactly contemporaries. Actually,
Chico and Coupler were contemporaries, but Copernicus died three years
before Tico was even born. But because of their work,
(00:45):
they're really closely connected, at least to a degree exactly.
Copernicus began writing about his heliocentric theory of the universe
and the early fifteen hundreds, and he published a book
about his ideas in fifteen forty three or so, around
in the year that he died. Um. But this theory,
what it was is it essentially proposed that the Sun
(01:06):
as the center of the universe, that the Earth, any
other planets revolved around the Sun, and this was a
really controversial idea at the time since people previously had
believed the Earth was at the center of the universe
and was stationary. Yeah, I mean, now we know that
Copernicus was right, but it was controversial at the time. Kepler,
of course, from the previous episode, Kepler is actually the
(01:27):
one who confirmed this helio centric model using Tica's data.
That's how they all fit together. Um. Even though ironically
Tico didn't even agree with copernicus model. No, not at all.
He had his own theory about the universe UM and
actually another discovery, rather significant discovery of his own. He
(01:47):
spotted a supernova in the constellation of Cassiopeia in fifteen
seventy two. He thought at the time, and most people
thought at the time that it was just a new star.
Of course, now we know that a supernova is the
explosion of a dying star, but it was still considered
pretty significant and also controversial at the time. But what
was probably most amazing about the observations that were done
(02:08):
up to this point by Tico and others is that
they were done pretty much with the naked eye. They
had some instruments, but they're pretty much going going solo
and uh, the work of the first astronomer on this
list though, kind of change that. Yeah, you can imagine
if you start bringing in some tools, you're gonna have
an explosion and discovery. Right, So the first discovery we're
(02:29):
gonna look at was made by a guy who you
might have heard of, Sarah, I'm not sure. His name's Galileo.
Galileo also my favorite search engine for finding out all
of this historical information. So true now. Galileo was an
Italian astronomer born fifteen sixty four died sixteen forty two,
(02:50):
and he was also known for his contributions in mathematics
and science. He was the first astronomer to use a telescope,
so that's kind of what we're referring to before. He
wasn't the inventor of the telescope, we should point that out.
He was just the first user for astronomical purposes. And
he actually constructed the first know and complete astronomical telescope,
which was basically a crude refracting telescope with a convex
(03:13):
objective lens and a cave eyepiece and a long tube, which,
not to discredit Galileo, but it seems like somebody might
have put together such a simple device before this point.
But you know, with this new contraption he is able
to observe a lot and make a lot of new discoveries.
And one of the most significant observations was that of
(03:36):
the Milky Way, which of course is the galaxy we
live in and that's how we know it now. Um.
He observed that the Milky Ways composed of billions of
individual stars, and until this point people just sort of
saw it as this band of bright light going across
the sky. They didn't realize what it was actually made of. Yes,
(03:58):
the Greeks called the light Galaxius Kuklos or milk circle.
But when Galileo turned his telescope on it, this fancy
new device that he had, he realized that the stars
were actually emitting the light that people had seen for
so many years, and no one had figured this out
before because the stars were just too faint or distant
to be seen with the naked eye. Yeah, you could
(04:20):
just see their collective star shine, not the individual bodies.
And later astronomers, who had stronger instruments to work with,
they were able to expand on this knowledge and determine
the galaxy shape, its composition and so forth. But um,
but Galileo kind of started it by figuring out what
(04:41):
was there in the first place. Yeah. So that's his
most famous contribution to uh astronomy, probably, but he's got
a lot of other impressive contributions which also stemmed from
having this new device. He discovered that the Moon had
this cratery, mountainous surface, and he observed four moons of
(05:02):
Jupiter and observed the phases of Venus and sun spots,
which sounds kind of dangerous looking at the Sun with
your new telescope, Galileo, But I don't know. Um. And
of course all of these findings helped really confirm that
Copernican view that the Sun was at the center of
our solar system. Yep, it all comes back to Copernicus
(05:24):
again and again. This idea. Copernicus idea is causing controversy
because Galileo later published works in support of the Copernican system,
and that's what famously got him in trouble with the
Church eventually, because the Church decided in sixteen sixteen that
the Copernican system was dangerous to faith, and so Galileo,
(05:45):
as many know was forced to live out the rest
of his days in seclusion. But fortunately we have other
astronomers on our list. Yes, the next one is Edmund Haley,
who you may have heard his name before as well. Yeah,
I think pretty much everyone knows what he's famous for,
but we'll give you a little background on him anyway.
(06:06):
And then Haley was an English astronomer and mathematician who
was born in sixteen fifty six and died in seventeen
forty two. And he was fortunate enough to live during
a time of scientific revolution, unlike a lot of the
astronomers that we looked we've looked at here, like Galleo, right,
and he was actually encouraged to study astronomy and it
didn't it didn't take too long for him to make
(06:26):
a name for himself in the field. Yeah. So when
he was only about twenty years old, it was sixteen
seventy six, sixteen seventy eight, he cataloged the celestial longitudes
and latitudes of three hundred and forty one stars and remarkably,
that was the first work of its kind about stars
in the southern hemisphere. People knew a lot about what
(06:47):
was going on in the top half the globe, but
not so much about the southern hemisphere. And he was
good buddies with Isaac Newton too in the sixteen eighties,
and he even assisted Newton in publishing his influential work
The Principia. Later, Haley even became Astronomer Royal in seventeen twenty.
But as we mentioned before, he's most well known for
(07:10):
a certain achievement in observational astronomy that involves comments. Yeah,
his work started when he studied the parabolic orbits of
twenty four comets that had been observed from thirteen thirty
seven to sixteen ninety eight, and he published these findings
in a work called The Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets.
And he made a really amazing discovery in that work
(07:33):
that three of these historic comments when from fifteen thirty one,
sixteen o seven and sixteen eighty two, which is that
last one is the one that he observed personally. He
realized that they were so similar that they had to
have been the same comment. And from that he realized
that well, the comment was due back again right. The
(07:57):
thing that really clinched it is that he accurately predicted
the rich her and have said comment in seventeen fifty eight,
and he didn't live to see it, unfortunately, But today
it's known as Haley's comment, so he did receive credit
for his discovery. Yeah, Devlena and I were talking about
it earlier, but we are not the right age for
Haley's comment. Yeah, I'm kind of bummed about that. Way
(08:18):
too young, or we'll be really old next time I
come through. Theoretically we could have seen it in eighty six,
but I wouldn't have remembered if I did. Unfortunately, Apparently
to the eighties, six comment pass was not a very
impressive one, so maybe we didn't miss that much. Well
they did, I think managed to collect a lot of
data about it. Yeah, so there's something all right. Well,
(08:41):
the next entry on our list didn't just discover a comment.
I think he did one better than that. Yeah, he
discovered an entire planet. And we are talking about Sir
William Herschel, who was a German born British astronomer born
seventeen thirty eight died in eighteen twenty two. And he
actually I find this really interesting. He started out as
(09:01):
a musician and he played the oboe, and music is
what eventually led him through an interest in mathematics and
in lenses, which eventually led him then to astronomy. But
like the others on this list, Herschel was known for
making several contributions to astronomy, So before we talk about
his major discovery, will mention a few of those. He
(09:22):
studied binary stars in nebula, and he theorized that nebula
are composed of stars and so, like I said, these
are just a couple of the many, many observations that
he made. But he's also known for having kind of
a crazy theory definitely, yeah, a little bit out there.
He thought that life existed on all planets and the Sun.
(09:42):
In fact, the clincher, Yeah, that's kind of the really
wacky one. He thought that He thought that this was
possible because the Sun had a cool surface, and that
the heat that a cool solid surface yep, And that
the heat that came from it actually emanated from the atmosphere,
but that there was a layer of clouds in between
(10:02):
the atmosphere and the ground that protected the people who
live inhabitants. But I don't know if he thought they
were people. Maybe, so an interesting idea but generally considered
to be a little out there, But what he's best
known for, as we mentioned, is discovering the seventh planet
(10:24):
Uranus in one and he discovered the planet while he
was doing a survey of all the stars that were
about ten times dimmer than those that you could see
with the naked eye. And other astronomers had of course
observed Uranus before, but they thought it was a star.
He realized that it was something other than a star
(10:44):
because it was a disc shape, which is not a
stellar attribute. And this was a really big deal. I
mean not just because it's a new planet, but because
up until that point there was this consensus among scientists
that there were only sick planets. There was Earth and
then five planets that had been observed as long as
(11:05):
recorded history. And that change, you know, the the admission
that there could be new planets really opened up astronomers
to go look for others. And this paved the way
for the discovery of Neptune in eighteen forty six by
Johann gal So. I mean, it's a big change not
just in what astronomers knew, but what they were willing
to believe. Absolutely. The next person on this list also
(11:30):
had an interesting discovery that um that kind of changed
the way people perceived the universe. And we're talking about
Justesseepi Piazzi, who was an Italian astronomer born seventeen forty
six died eighteen twenty six, and he was also interestingly
a Theatin monk and a professor of theology. He became
(11:50):
a mathematics professor at the Academy of Palermo in seventeen
eighty and he also founded the Observatory of Palermo, which
is where he did a lot of his work. And
it is there that he catalogued seven thousand and six
hundred and forty six stars, which to me is just
an amazing huge number of stars. But most significantly, in
eighteen o one, he discovered and named the first asteroids,
(12:13):
Series Yeah, and he took three separate observations of it
and worked on calculating its orbit and did so with
surprising accuracy, so much so that the following year his
predictions of its position turned out to be accurate. Um
So Series has a mass of one one hundred thousand
(12:36):
that of Earth, so it's really small compared to a planet,
but it's huge compared to you know, your average asteroid.
In fact, it's the biggest, most massive asteroid in the
asteroid belt that's between Mars and Jupiter. Right. It's so
big that at the time he called it, he people
thought it was a minor planet of sorts. Um. Of course,
(12:58):
after a few years, I think about eighteen fifty, it's
classification changed to asteroid UM because many other asteroids were
found thanks to his discovery, and they were identified and UM,
and so that allowed again a new sort of perception
of the universe. And and then in two thousand and six,
(13:18):
after the controversy the big hullabaloo over Pluto is in
a planet or not? Yep, um, Pluto got downgraded and
Serious kind of got upgraded. It was reclassified as a
dwarf planet. Yeah, I guess, because if Pluto isn't going
to be a planet, then Serious needs a little booth.
So from this point we're gonna go extra galactic and
(13:39):
go beyond our own Solar system at last. And it's
Edwin Powell Hubble who takes us there. He's an American astronomer.
Eighteen eighty nine is when he was born, and he
died in nineteen fifty three. And he started out a
lot like Tico. If you listen to that podcast, then
you'll know that Tico started out studying all because his uncle,
(14:01):
who's basically like a father to him, had raised him
pressured him to do so. But he was always interested
um in astronomy and was kind of studying it on
the sly all the time. And um Hubble was a
lot the same way. He he was studying law at
the insistence of his father. But then finally when his
father died in nineteen thirteen, he got his chance to
(14:21):
pursue a graduate degree in astronomy. Yeah, even though he
had another delay with the onset of World War One,
But finally after the war is over, he was able
to make up for all this lost time and really
get to making some serious observations. Yep. And he was
working at Mount Wilson Observatory in California and studying spiral nebula,
(14:44):
which is what he had done his doctorate on. These
were problematic because nobody could tell exactly what the spirals were.
Were they other star systems, were they clouds of gas
within or near the Milky Way? What were they? Nobody knew.
So his research led to the discovery that there are
in fact other galaxies that exist outside in the Milky Way,
and this was kind of known as his major contribution. Um.
(15:07):
He pulled this achievement off by studying variable stars in
the Andromeda nebula and using the fluctuations of light and
these stars to kind of figure out the nebulous distance,
and he found out that that distance was nine thousand
light years away, which was far beyond the borders of
the Milky Way. Yeah, and so his fines with the
Andromeda nebula and other spiral nebula convinced a lot of
(15:30):
astronomers that the universe was made out of multiple galaxies.
There wasn't just hours, there were countless galaxies, and the
Andromeda nebula is of course now known as the Andromeda
galaxy appropriately enough. And um, it's interesting. But later he
even proposed a theory for why the majority of these
(15:51):
external galaxies appeared to be moving away from us, moving
away from Earth. Later he even proposed a theory about
why I it seemed the majority of external galaxies were
moving away from Earth, you know, moving away from where
we are. And so that was sort of the key
to the establishment of extra galactic astronomy, and of course,
(16:13):
the Hubble Space Telescope which launched into space in nineteen
ninety and has led to so many more discoveries, was
named for him. Yeah, we have an article on the Hubble.
We do have an article on how the Hubble Space
telescope works, and um many astronomy articles actually, so we're
pretty stoffed in this department, yep. And so while we've
(16:35):
wrapped up today's list, you can continue to find out
a lot more about what discoveries were made about space
and explore that. Yeah, and also, I mean, I know
we've only covered five amazing astronomical discovery and I'm sure
there are many more favorites you have, And you can
email us at History podcast at how stuff works dot
(16:57):
com or find us on Twitter and mr History or
on Facebook, and I don't know, throw in your vote
for your favorite astronomical discover the Rings of Saturn, Pluto.
Tell us what your favorites are. And again, if you
want to look up those astronomy articles we mentioned, you
can find them by visiting our homepage and typing an
(17:18):
astronomy at www dot how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com to learn more about the podcast
Click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
a rise. Download it today on iTunes.
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