Discovering galaxies

Bursting through the limits of space and time

Jean-René RoySpace Telescope Science Institute

Hubble Science Briefing

5 July, 20125 July, 2012

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The key ideas

•Many people “discovered” galaxies

•Many people found the distances to galaxies

•A few people found that the universe was expanding and accelerating

•Establishing priority is a complex exercise

•The discovery of the “sidereal universe” is a fascinating story of humankind curiosity, astuteness and ingenuity

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How were galaxies discovered?

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Pre-history

• Abd al-Rahman ibn Umar al-Sufi (903 - 986) refers to a “small cloud” in Andromeda

• Book of the constellations of the fixed stars in year 964

Al-Sufi (903-986)

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The Herschels - William (1738-1822), Caroline (1750-1848) & John (1792-1871)

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While William Herschel is surveying the sky for binary stars, his sister searches for new comets.

With her comet finder, Caroline discovers several new “nebulae”

William switches his program to the “study of the sidereal Universe”

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.... the naked eye, which, as we have before estimated,

can only see the stars of the seventh magnitude so as to distinguish them; but it is nevertheless very evident that the united lustre of

millions of stars, such as I suppose the nebula in

Andromeda to be, will reach our sight in the shape of a

very small, faint nebulosity; since the nebula which I

speak may easily be seen in a fine evening.

William Herschel,

Construction of the Heavens, 1785 1010

Immanuel Kant 1724 - 1804“I easily persuaded myself

that these stars can be nothing else than a mass of

many fixed stars... On account of their feeble

light, they are removed to an inconceivable distance from

us.” (1755)

“Island Universes”

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William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse (1800-1867)

Birr Castle, Ireland

72-inch Leviathan72-inch Leviathan

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Whirlpool Galaxy (M51 or NGC 5194/95)

Leviathan HST

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How far away? How we found out

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Extragalactic Renaissance

• Opinions change dramatically between 1900 and 1920

• Opposing views for “in” (Shapley/van Maanen) and for “out” (Curtis, Lundmark, Öpik, Hubble)

• Strong observational evidence builds up quickly for most nebulae to be “extragalactic”

• Several new technologies provide the key tools

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Isaac Roberts introduces astrophotography for nebular

work

1829-1904

Roberts took this first photograph of the Andromeda galaxy on December 29, 1888

Roberts observatory, Crowborough - Sussex

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New technologies: sturdy metal mount, precision motor drive, glass mirror 1818

Shapley: The Milky Way is big (300,000 l-y) and is everything = the universe, but ...

Harlow Shapley (1885-1972)

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Novae!

~24 novae/yr are observed every yearin the Andromeda galaxy

2020

Knut Lundmark (1889-1958)Heber Curtis (1872-1942)

In 1917, novae in the Andromeda “nebula”:they are located at 650,000 light-years =

well outside the Milky Way2121

Vesto Slipher (1875-1969)

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Ernst Öpik (1893-1985)In 1922, Ernst Öpik uses

stellar orbital velocity and starlight density of

Andromeda:

Distance = 1,440,000 l-yMass = 4.5 billions “suns” 2323

“Cracking the nut” of galaxies

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Text

Henrietta Leavitt and a new class of

variable stars: Cepheids

1868-1921

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N not a nova it is a

variableCepheid

Andromeda Galaxy, M31 by Edwin Hubble

Edwin Hubble (1889-1953)Edwin Hubble (1889-1953)

“The spiral is 7.25 times as far away as the Cloud, or about 680,000 l-y.”

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Corcoran Hall, George Washington University, DC

American Astronomical Society 1st Jan 1925“Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae”, Edwin Hubble

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... there is the shadow of Adriaan van Maanen

1894-1946

M 332828

Edwin Hubble

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How was the expansion of the universe found?

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The expanding universe

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Text

General Relativity: A theory of space-time and gravitation 3131

Alexander Friedman (1888-1925)

Georges Lemaître (1894-1966)

Slipher Humason Hubble

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Lundmark (1889-1958)

1924: First “distance-velocity diagram” by Knut Lundmark

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Edwin Hubble

Milton Humason

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The “Hubble law” of 1929

v = H0 d

v = recessional velocityH0 = Hubble constant

d = distance

H0 = 72 km/sec per megaparsec or 20 km/sec per million light-years

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H. Nussbaumer and L. Bieri (2011) write that Hubble was very dubious that the recessional velocities represented the expansion of the universe: “Actually Hubble never believed in such a thing.”

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The evolving universe

As we go back into the early history of the universe, we see a different universe

•Stars are forming at a much higher rate

•This rate is changing rapidly over the first Gyrs (1 Gyr = 109 years)

•Galaxies are merging at a higher rate

•Galaxy morphology is different

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The universe was condensed in a “fireball” of space-time 13.7 billion years ago

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Georges Lemaître

40 rue de NamurLouvain

Georges Lemaître

40 rue de NamurLouvain

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Hubble Deep Fields

Galaxy cluster Abell 2744 ~3.5 Giga-ly

More distant field

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The world of galaxies is much more varied and strange than inferred by Hubble’s elegant scheme.

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Movie Credits: Frank Summers (STScI), Chris Mihos (Case Western Reserve Univ.) & Lars Hernquist (Harvard)

Download movie here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/16/video/d/

“Cosmic Collisions”A Computer Simulation of Galaxies

Colliding

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Adam Riess

Brian Schmidt

Albert EinsteinSaul Perlmutter

Signatures of dark energy and of dark matter

2011 Physics Nobel

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In the last 100 years, the volume of the

observed universe has been multiplied by

1015 times, or “one million billion times

! ”4646

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200 billion galaxies in the200 billion galaxies in theobservable universe, each with observable universe, each with

about 100 billion stars like the sunabout 100 billion stars like the sun

20,000,000,000,000,000,000,00020,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars stars

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The Suomi NPP Blue Marble, Credit:NASA/NOAA

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Discovering galaxies: some references

• The Realm of the Nebulae, Edwin Hubble, Yale University Press, 1936

• Man Discovers the Galaxies, R. Berendzen, Richard Hart & Daniel Seeley, Science History Publications, 1976

• The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak, Pantheon Books, 2009

• Discovering the Expanding Universe, H. Nussbaumer & L. Bieri, Cambridge University Press, 2009

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy

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Images from

•NASA and ESA

•Space Telescope Science Institute

•Gemini Observatory

•Canada France Hawaii Telescope

•Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University

•Wikipedia Commons

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Acknowledgments

•Zoltan Levay, STScI

•Carolyn Slivinski, STScI

•Frank Summers, STScI

•Paul Espinoza, JHU Peabody Library

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Thank you5858