A very special star
Follow the Dave’s Universe blog: www.Astronomy.com/davesuniverse Follow Dave Eicher on Twitter:@deicherstar Edwin Hubble was neither the most accomplished astronomer on Earth nor the most well-liked by his colleagues. Yet, in the fall of 1923, he discovered a special star that turned our understanding of the cosmos on its head. On the night of October ⅚, using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory outside Los Angeles, Hubble recorded a deep exposure of what was then called the Andromeda Nebula. He was intensely curious about so-called spiral nebulae: Were they clouds of gas and stars within our galaxy, or very distant, mysterious objects? Hubble was elated with his glass-plate negative. He believed he had found a nova, an exploding star, within the nebula, and he marked it with an N. Subsequent checking…