Nebula

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases.

Using the Hooker Telescope — the largest telescope of its day — at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, astronomer Edwin Hubble found that some nebulae, such as the Andromeda nebula, were separate galaxies like our own Milky Way galaxy.

The Hubble Telescope has given us spectacular pictures from space, from the dramatic image of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, some 6,500 to 7,000 light years from Earth, to a snapshot of nearly 10,000 galaxies, including some that may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old.

American astronomer Edwin Hubble published a paper in 1924 demonstrating that M31, known then as the Andromeda Nebula, lies far outside our own galaxy.

In 1923, Edwin Hubble used the world's largest telescope, perched atop Mount Wilson in California, to measure the distance to the Great Andromeda Nebula, proving that it was much too far away to belong to our galaxy.

The star Nu, which serves as a pointer to the Great Nebula, is itself worth some attention with a pretty strong glass on account of a pair of small stars near it.

We don't yet know which stars were formed in the same nebula as our sun.

Do you know what a nebula is?

The Hubble Telescope has given us spectacular pictures from space, from the dramatic image of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, some 6,500 to 7,000 light years from Earth, to a snapshot of nearly 10,000 galaxies, including some that may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. Awe-inspiring though they are, they are not detailed enough to help us in our search for life in the trillions of galaxies across the universe.

At the time the photogravures were ordered no large scale photograph of the Trifid nebula had, so far as I am aware, ever been published.