Two telescopes allowed us to see deeper into space
Edwin Hubble’s observations in the 1920s with his ground-breaking Hooker telescope proved that the universe continues millions of light years beyond the Milky Way. Since then, the space telescope that bears his name has improved our vision still further.
100 YEARS AGO: One galaxy! Hubble defined the Milky Way
100 years ago, spiral nebulas such as Andromeda were considered phenomena inside the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble measured the distance to them and established that they were located much further away and so were independent galaxies.
NOW: Hundreds of billions of galaxies! The Hubble telescope made us tiny
The Hubble space telescope has shown us that there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe – and perhaps even twice as many.
The remote galaxies appear in this image as small red dots. The light that we receive from them was emitted some 13 billion years ago.