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* Galileo determines that the MilkyWay is composed of many stars*
Galileo Galilei uses a telescope to determine that the bright band on the sky, the "Milky Way", is composed of many faint stars -
Thomas Wright discusses galaxies and the shape of the Milky Way
Thomas Wright discusses galaxies and the shape of the Milky Way -
* Immanuel Kant*
1755, Immanuel Kant, drawing on earlier work by Thomas Wright, speculated (correctly) that the galaxy might be a rotating body of a huge number of stars, held together by gravitational forces akin to the solar system but on much larger scales. -
William Herschel describes the shape of the Milky Way
William Herschel carried the first attempt to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun in it by carefully counting the number of stars in different regions of the sky. He produced a diagram of the shape of the galaxy with the solar system close to the center. -
Lord Rosse discovers a nebula with a distinct spiral shape
Lord Rosse discovers a nebula with a distinct spiral shape -
solid evidence of galaxies
In 1924, Edwin Powell Hubble shook the foundations of astronomy when he provided solid evidence of the existence of galaxies. -
Edwin Hubble introduces the spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxy classifications
Edwin Hubble introduces the spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxy classifications -
Gerard de Vaucouleurs discovers that the galaxies within approximately 200 million light years of the Virgo cluster are confined to a giant supercluster disk
Gerard de Vaucouleurs discovers that the galaxies within approximately 200 million light years of the Virgo cluster are confined to a giant supercluster disk, -
Donald Gudehus finds evidence that clusters of galaxies are moving at several hundred kilometers per second
Donald Gudehus finds evidence that clusters of galaxies are moving at several hundred kilometers per second -
Leonard Searle and Robert Zinn theorize that galaxy formation occurs through the merger of smaller groups.
Leonard Searle and Robert Zinn theorize that galaxy formation occurs through the merger of smaller groups. -
Margaret Geller and John Huchra discover the "Great Wall", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light years long and 200 million wide, but only 15 million light years thick
Margaret Geller and John Huchra discover the "Great Wall", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light years long and 200 million wide, but only 15 million light years thick -
Michael Rowan-Robinson and Tom Broadhurst discover that the IRAS galaxy IRAS F10214+4724 is the brightest known object in the Universe
Michael Rowan-Robinson and Tom Broadhurst discover that the IRAS galaxy IRAS F10214+4724 is the brightest known object in the Universe -
galaxy found that is more then 13 billion years old
In 2007, using the Keck telescope, a team from California Institute of Technology found six star forming galaxies about 13.2 billion light years (light travel distance) away and therefore created when the universe was only 500 million years old. The discovery of a galaxy more than 13 billion years old, which existed only 480 million years after the Big Bang, was reported in January 2011. -
Most distant galaxy found
In October 2013, z8_GND_5296 was confirmed to be the most distant galaxy yet discovered, at a distance of approximately 13.1 billion light-years from Earth. The galaxy appears to astronomers as it was "just 700 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only about 5 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years."