By Don Sweeting | Commentary, DonSweeting.com
When you look into the night sky, the naked eye can only make out 2,500-3,000 stars, five planets and maybe one to three galaxies, and that’s assuming ideal atmospheric conditions and the right location. That has been enough in human history to dazzle us with the immensity and wonder of what we can see.
But 100 years ago, astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889-1953), working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, made a stunning discovery: He calculated that a spiral nebula called Andromeda was about 860,000 light years away — more than eight times further than the most distant stars in our galaxy. He came to realize that what we thought was a gas or star cluster in the Milky Way was actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way was just one of many galaxies in the universe.
Hubble announced his discovery on Dec. 30, 1924. We celebrate that anniversary this week. Hubble went on to discover about 24 more galaxies.
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