Re: Seeing In The Dark thread
- From: Mike Simmons <msimm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:48:42 -0700
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:46:43 -0700, oriel36 wrote:
First of all, while indeed the contributions of Hubble and others in
the 1920's were indeed a dramatic watershed in galactic astronomy,
I would consider it a total misconception to opine that before this
breakthrough, there was only a "perception of stars scattered willy
nilly throughout space."
So Margo,who would you like to attribute the discovery of galaxies
to ?,tell me in what year did another observational
astronomer,other than Hubble, determine that these giant rotating
stellar islands known as galaxies are distinct from ours
Margo is right that the understanding of the nature of the cosmos did not
suddenly go from a kind of dark ages into the light with one of Hubble's
observations. There were many others who believed in the "island universe"
concept and there was good evidence for it. The red shift of galaxies was
observed years before Hubble and it was noted that the highest red shifts
were associated with "nebulae" with the smallest apparent size and lowest
luminance, both of which suggested that they were farther away. But there
wasn't conclusive proof that the red shift was caused by the "nebulae's"
radial velocity nor that the smaller and fainter appearing "nebulae"
appeared that way because they were more distant. Individual stars were
observed and photographed with the 60-inch telescope before the 100-inch
was built and their faintness -- if they were stars -- indicated that they
were at extreme distances. But there was no proof that they were stars
rather than "nebular condensations".
What Hubble did was show that at least some of the "nebular condensations"
were indeed stars and that their faintness was due to their extreme
distance. It was a great accomplishment and the original observation even
survived someone else's marking the variable star as a nova before Hubble
took a look and identified it as a Cepheid. I have no bias against Hubble
but quite the opposite -- I've been at Mount Wilson for 25 years and have
written articles and made countless presentations on its history. And I've
described his discovery and his continuing projects many hundreds of times
in giving tours of the 100-inch. I've seen the original plate discovery
plate, too -- the black and white reproductions are wrong -- he wrote
"-VAR!-" in red marker! But while science very occassionally will move in
one giant step it never progresses from such a gross lack of understanding
to understanding as simply as you've described. Hubble was a giant and a
visionary who had intuition for many things that proved to be right (others
I know who knew him will admit as much despite disliking him personally,
sometimes quite intensely). This doesn't diminish his discoveries. In
some ways it makes them even more important -- others sometimes had the
data but Hubble's insight led him to conclusions that others missed. But
the idea that the spiral nebulae were separate galaxies was not his alone.
He put the matter to rest in one dramatic observation, though, and that is
indeed a very rare event for which he deserves the credit he gets.
Mike Simmons
.
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