


He crossed out the "N" and wrote "VAR," for variable. Later, Hubble realized that the nova at top right was actually a Cepheid variable. Background, Issues, and Aftermath, by Virginia Trimble. An arrow points to a copy of Hubble's image of Andromeda, which was made on a 4-inch-by-5-inch (approximately 10 x 13 cm) glass plate and dated 6 October 1923.Įdwin Hubble originally identified three novae, a class of exploding star, by writing "N" next to each object. Edwin Hubble continued to work at the Mount Wilson Observatory right up until he died of a blood clot in his brain in 1953.

The large white box outlines the region imaged by astronomer Edwin Hubble, who used the 100-inch Hooker telescope, the most powerful telescope of that era. Astronomers use them to calculate how far away they are from Earth. Cepheid variables are pulsating stars that brighten and fade in a predictable pattern. The white circle at lower left identifies Hubble variable number one, or V1, the Cepheid variable star discovered by astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1923. The snapshot is blanketed with stars, which look like grains of sand. An arrow points to the Hubble image, taken by the Wide Field Camera 3. The tiny white box just above centre outlines the Hubble Space Telescope view. Andromeda is a Milky Way neighbor and resides 2 million light-years away. The pancake-shaped disk of stars, gas, and dust that make up the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is shown in the image at left. The first is that Albert Einstein ’s general theory of relativity correctly describes the gravitational interaction of all matter. Views of a famous pulsating star taken nearly 90 years apart and a portrait of its galactic home are shown in this image collection. See how Edwin Hubble, Georges Lemaître, Arno Penzias, and Robert Wilson contributed to the big-bang model See all videos for this article The big-bang model is based on two assumptions.
