Sunday Reflection: "We Measure Shadows"

 

"With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary-the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial." -- astronomer Edwin Hubble, in his "The Realm of the Nebulae" (1936).

On March 8, 1934, Hubble, using Mount Wilson observatory's powerful Hooker telescope, demonstrated that the universe consisted of as many galaxies as stars in the Milky Way galaxy.  Previously, the assumption among most astronomers was that the universe was limited to our own Milky Way galaxy. In that discovery, Hubble exponentially increased the knowledge of the universe to other astronomers through a galaxy classification system, measuring the distance to galaxies and laws governing  galactic movement. 

(photo: historic image of Hubble's view through the telescope taken on March 8, 1934)