glenc
01-01-2013, 04:07 PM
"As 2012 comes to a close and you toast the New Year, be sure to also raise a glass to one Vesto Melvin Slipher (http://www2.lowell.edu/Research/library/paper/vm_slipher.html)...
On the night of September 17, 1912, Slipher observed [photographed] the Andromeda nebula (http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cms/astro/cosmos/A/Andromeda+galaxy), for a total of six hours and 50 minutes. Later, he made even lengthier observations including two over consecutive nights, and one over the last three nights of 1912. It was a cosmic breakthrough.
Slipher had finally recorded useful spectra. In 1913 he announced (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1913LowOB...2...56S& amp;data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_pa per=YES&type=PRINTER&filety pe=.pdf) that the Andromeda nebula was moving toward us at an astonishing rate of 300 km/s.
At the time, the majority of stars had much smaller velocities, measured in the tens of km/s. Sliphers' velocity was quite startling."
http://theconversation.edu.au/expand-into-2013-by-toasting-100-years-of-modern-cosmology-10885
On the night of September 17, 1912, Slipher observed [photographed] the Andromeda nebula (http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cms/astro/cosmos/A/Andromeda+galaxy), for a total of six hours and 50 minutes. Later, he made even lengthier observations including two over consecutive nights, and one over the last three nights of 1912. It was a cosmic breakthrough.
Slipher had finally recorded useful spectra. In 1913 he announced (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1913LowOB...2...56S& amp;data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_pa per=YES&type=PRINTER&filety pe=.pdf) that the Andromeda nebula was moving toward us at an astonishing rate of 300 km/s.
At the time, the majority of stars had much smaller velocities, measured in the tens of km/s. Sliphers' velocity was quite startling."
http://theconversation.edu.au/expand-into-2013-by-toasting-100-years-of-modern-cosmology-10885