The search for answers regarding the universe starts with ancient societies, which tried to explain astronomical phenomena and features through religious and mythological meanings. Aboriginal culture, for example, calls “Emu in the sky” the dark nebulas (opaque clouds of dust and gas) that are in front of the Milky Way, as they form a shape of the animal, which was depicted in the same position in engravings found in Australia. The symbol comes from these nebulas rather than from stars of Milky Way, although it is only possible to see the “Emu shape” because of the stars brightness in the background.
This bright band in the clear night sky draws attention since the beginning of human history and the understanding of that in scientific
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The result is a disk of stars that can be seen as the bright band on the sky from our perspective inside the disk. Therefore, the concept of “galaxy” and the place of the solar system within it were starting to be developed. William Herschel in 1785, for example, was the first to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun by counting the number of stars in different regions of the sky, but his results were a shape of the galaxy with the solar system close to the center. By using a method of cataloguing globular clusters, Harlow Shapley came with a flat disk with the Sun far from the center. Although, he did not take in account the absorption of light wavelengths by interstellar dust, present in the galactic plane. With the quantification of this effect done in 1930 by studying open clusters, Robert Julius Trumpler came with the result that is the present picture of our galaxy.
Some other galaxies are visible to naked eye in the clear night sky as Andromeda Galaxy, for example, but the first astronomers to observe them called them nebulas and categorized them as elliptical and spiral. In 1750, Thomas Wright (in the same publication previously cited) speculated that some of
Many of the heavenly bodies were considered to be the representations of deities. The master of reason, Aristotle, stated once long ago that everything was made of only five elements the final being what makes up the heavenly bodies, after all they lacked the proper technologies to know differently. It was Galileo in 1610, using his telescope, that found dark spots on the sun. So as technological innovations occur our understanding of physics and astronomy grow. Newton in 1687 discovered the laws of gravity, suggested that all the solar and stellar bodies operated the same.
lifetime. Some of Edwin Hubble's greatest accomplishments were: Edwin Hubble proposed a classification system for nebulae, which are fuzzy little patches of light that are up in the sky. He discovered a variable star, called the Cepheid. It is located in the Andromeda Nebulae. Edwin Hubble settled decisively the question of the nature of the galaxies. Edwin Hubble's distribution of galaxies was determined to be homogeneous in distance. Edwin wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and pattern of brightness. By observing redshifts Edwin saw that galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the distance between them (this is known as Hubble's Law).
For centuries humans looked up at the sky and wondered where we came from and why we are here. It was this fascination that lead scientists and philosophers to explore the Universe for answers. Over time these answers varied depending on what religion, ideas and technology was available to them. Some believed in an Aristotelian Universe centred around the Earth where others believed in the Copernican Universe which placed our sun in the centre. Most theories were dispelled due to the religious connotations and that it went against their belief of creationism. Like with all theories the specifics of this developed over time, and there have been many countless advances since the first proposal.
In 1608 Hans Lippershey looked at Jupiter through a thin tube shaped object similar to a telescope. Galileo improved the telescope made by Hans in 1609 by adding a convex lens in the front. The telescope was built with a concave eyepiece and convex lenses. Telescopes were used for improving maps and figuring out the positions and motions of stars early on. Scientists believed that the bigger the lens of a telescope the better, so a man named George E. Hale had created a 100 inch telescope which was finished in 1917. Around the 1920s Edwin Hubble had looked through the telescope towards the sky and had discovered that our galaxy, the Milky Way, was not the only galaxy. He also discovered that our galaxy was expanding. Fifty years later the Hubble was funded to be built. The Hubble was supposed to be launched in 1983, but didn’t end up going into space until 1990. NASA launched the Hubb...
Every day we look into the night sky, wondering and dreaming what lies beyond our galaxy. Within our galaxy alone, there are millions upon millions of stars. This may be why it interests us to learn about all that we cannot see. Humans have known the existence of stars since they have had eyes, and see them as white glowing specks in the sky. The mystery lies beyond the white glowing specks we see but, in the things we cannot see in the night sky such as black holes.
The extreme brightness of the O-type and B-type stars, coupled with the Earth’s atmosphere, has always made high-resolution imaging of the star-forming region difficult. But recent advances in adaptive optics and the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope have allowed for incredible detail into the center of the dust cloud. 3 The technological advances have also helped reveal several faint stars within the center of the nebula.
Let there be dark Darkness, the first thing you see when you wake up and the last thing you see when you drift asleep. Now imagine a darkness darker than you've ever known. This is what Paul Bogard wrote about, the devastating lost of darkness that has happened to our world. Bogard connects to his audience by using statistics, facts, and emotion. First off, using statistics makes the author of the arguing paper seem logical and intelligent on what they're writing about.
Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2013. 42+. Print.
The first reference to the Andromeda Galaxy was around 964 by the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sulfi in his Book of Fixed Stars in which he described it as like a little cloud. After this the first description of the Andromeda Galaxy through a telescope was by a German Astronomer by the name of Simon Marius on December15, 1612. After this Charles Messier catalogued the Andromeda Galaxy in M31 in the year of 1764 which made people incorrectly give credit to Messier for the discovery of this galaxy although it was visible to the naked
For hundreds of years, scientists have debated and gone into extensive research in order to determine how the Solar System was formed. Although a definite conclusion was never reached, many potential hypotheses were created on how it could have occurred. Despite having flaws, these hypotheses, the three most prominent being the nebular, protoplanet, and planetesimal hypotheses, remain the closest thing scientists have to knowing exactly how the Solar System in which humans live came to exist. In 1796, French scholar Pierre-Simon de Laplace formulated the nebular hypothesis for the formation of the Solar System.
By 1936, astronomers had realized that the hazy balls they sometimes saw in their telescopes, which looked like stars obscured by gas, were actually galaxies (Hibbison).
The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
...enith (straight overhead position). Two galaxies which are believed to revolve around our own are the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Only visible from the Southern Hemisphere, Magellan, the famous European explorer, was the first to describe these galaxies.
Generally, the universe began as a composition of radiation and subatomic particles, which proceeded with galaxies formation. Galaxies are made up of hydrogen, helium, 100-200 billions of stars, planets and most having a black hole at the center, which attracts everything present in galaxies by force of gravity. Galaxies can be classified as either spiral (Milky Way- galaxy which human kind has been found to exist), elliptical, lenticular and irregular, where the structure is determined by neighboring galaxies with most galaxies are moving away from each other. Classification of galaxies is being conducted by online programs such as Galaxy zoo, using pictures from telescopes and is making significant progress.
Since the dawn of intelligent man, humanity has speculated about the origins of the universe.