According to historical records, we have one man to thank for this: Edwin Hubble. That's certainly partly the truth, but he couldn't have done it without the genius of others around him who paved the way for his discovery.
"It's easy to romanticize Hubble and his discovery of the universe beyond the Milky Way galaxy, but his work really stood on the shoulders of a number of people," said Jeff Rich, an astronomer at the Carnegie Science Observatories, in a press conference at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on in Maryland.
That Rich was presenting the story of Edwin Hubble at the January 2025 AAS meeting was symbolic, for it was at the 33rd meeting of the AAS, a century ago on January 1, 1925 in Washington, D.C., that Hubble's work was officially presented for the first time.
Rich describes the discovery of the universe beyond the Milky Way as being a revelation centuries in the making, discussing how our understanding of our place in the cosmos gradually coalesced in time with new discoveries. The two people whose shoulders Hubble stood on the most, though, were Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Harlow Shapley.
Source: www.space.com
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