Astrotales

What's constant about the Hubble Constant?

Hubble served on the Advisory committee for the building the Mount Palomar Observatory. When asked in a BBC interview what he would do with a 200 inch telescope, Hubble replied, "I hope we find something we hadn't expected" The 200 inch telescope was the largest telescope for decades and the primary research tool for astronomers worldwide.

Before he died in 1953, Hubble developed the Hubble Constant which attempted to describe closely the recessional velocities of all galaxies-galaxies that he confirmed were "island universes" not nebulae or clouds as they were conceived of before. The Hubble Constant is one of those controversial essential numbers that astronomers and cosmologists have been refining and redefining ever since.

Although the Hubble Space Telescope is less than 1/2 the size of the great Palomar instrument, it is the first telescope to observe unhindered by the distortions of the atmosphere. Edwin Hubble could not have conceived that his work on classifying galaxies and defining the Big Bang would result in an instrument named after him whose resolution power was such that planets around nearby stars inside our own galaxy would be discovered. It is ironic indeed that the 200 inch Palomar instrument which Hubble used until his death in 1953 was not called the Hubble Telescope since it's magnificent light gathering power was ideal for researching galaxies, while the Hubble Space Telescope's claim to fame is discovering planets around nearby stars with it's atmosphereless resolving power.