WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 29These star cities are vast islands of matter,
f loating in a nearly limitless sea of inky
black space. BY DAVID J. EICHER
Explore
the world
of galaxies
W
aves crashed
along the
beach at Santa
Monica, vast
stands of
forest speck-
led the mountains north of the city,
and a mesmerizing network of roads
crisscrossed here and there. In 1923,
Los Angeles had a population of
1 million — just one-quarter of its
present size — and the city was in
the midst of explosive growth. At the
California Institute of Technology, an
American physicist, Robert Millikan,
won the Nobel Prize in Physics for
his measurement of the charge car-
ried by a single proton or electron (the
fundamental particles) and for work
on the photoelectric effect, includ-
ing his observation that many metals
emit electrons when they are struck
by light. Amelia Earhart took peri-
odic f lying lessons in the area. The
Hollywood Bowl had recently opened
for concert performances. And ayoung cartoonist named Walt Disney
arrived in town with $40 in his pocket.
Despite the area’s forward-looking
involvement in science and technology,
it was a primitive time. No one yet
knew the size and scope of the universe.
People had looked at the brightest
galaxies in the sky — the fuzzy patches
in Andromeda and the Magellanic
Clouds in the Southern Hemisphere
— but no one yet understood exactly
what they were. One big question
f loated out there: How big is eternity?
Is creation limitless? Soon, Los Angeles
would play a pivotal role in defining
the distance scale of the universe.The 100-inch telescope
On October 4, 1923, in the midst of
this peculiar Western paradise, a brash
young astronomer left his Pasadena
house and trekked up to the Mount
Wilson Observatory, not far from
Los Angeles, to the 100-inch Hooker
Telescope — at the time the largest
telescope in the world. Originally from
Missouri, Edwin Powell Hubble had
moved to Illinois, graduated from the
University of Chicago, and then earned
a master’s degree as a Rhodes Scholar
at the University of Oxford. He had
embarked on a career in astronomy
only after returning to school at the age
of 25 to pursue a Ph.D. Hubble was nowThe weird barred spiral NGC 4921
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 4921 in Coma
Berenices is a distant object at 320 million light-
years. It is a so-called anemic galaxy, labeled as
such by Canadian astronomer Sidney van den
Bergh because it has a very low rate of star
formation. Its spiral pattern around the small
central bar gives it the appearance of a delicate
painting. HUBBLE LEGACY ARCHIVE, ESA, NASA/ROBERTO COLOMBARI