A few weeks ago you had a look at the justly famous Sombrero Galaxy in the constellation Virgo. In a small telescope, the galaxy looks like a silver shard, a faint sliver of light with a star-like core obscured from end to end by a sharply defined lane of dust. It’s one of the prettiest galaxies in the night sky, and it was also a favorite of the Indiana-born astronomer Vesto Slipher, who paused to admire it from time to time as he analyzed its light to make one of the great discoveries of the 20th century. Let’s examine a few more photogenic galaxies on Slipher’s observing list from more than a century ago, and understand just what it was that he unexpectedly discovered [Read more…] about Spring Spiral Galaxies and the Expanding Universe
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