Science, Faith, and Leaving the 19th Century Behind

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(From Peter Kennett, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, one of 54 galaxies in the Local Group, photographed in 2005.)

Folks can see the Andromeda Galaxy from Earth's northern hemisphere: on a clear night with no moon, anyway. Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi gets credit for 'discovering' it: but I'm pretty sure that quite a few folks had seen it before he mentioned "A Little Cloud" in "Book of Fixed Stars," somewhere around 964.

Knowledge and Change


In 1764, Charles Messier, another astronomer, put the galaxy in his catalog as a nebula: object M31.

By the 19th century, astronomers realized that some light from the Andromeda "nebula" resembled light from stars. In 1925, Edwin Hubble used observations of Cepheid variable stars to demonstrate that the Andromeda Galaxy was another "island universe:" far outside our Milky Way Galaxy.

Light from the Andromeda Galaxy passing Earth today has been traveling for about 2,540,000 years. It began its journey when Australopithecus garhi, africanus, and afarensis lived. Some of those folks made the earliest stone tools we know about, so I'm inclined to see them as people: even if they didn't look like we do today.

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