Edwin Hubble

astronomer · galaxies · universe · discovery

Looked beyond clouds. Edwin Hubble used powerful telescopes to study fuzzy objects in the night sky that everyone thought were just clouds of gas. He figured out they were actually entire galaxies, each containing billions of stars, far beyond our Milky Way.

Measured cosmic distances. Hubble found a clever way to measure how far away galaxies were by studying special stars called Cepheid variables that pulse like cosmic lightbulbs. This let him map out where galaxies actually sit in space.

Expanded the universe. Before Hubble's work, most scientists thought the Milky Way was basically the whole universe. His discoveries showed the universe is incomprehensibly huge, filled with countless galaxies scattered throughout space.

Changed astronomy forever. Hubble's work created two entirely new fields of science: extragalactic astronomy (studying galaxies beyond ours) and observational cosmology (understanding the universe through observation). He fundamentally changed how we see our place in the cosmos.