Finding Galaxies
William Herschel
The William Herschel Telescope, initiated in 1987, as one of
the largest optical telescopes of its kind in Europe, with a primary mirror of
diameter 4.2 metres. Its state-of-the-art instrumentation together with the
superb sky quality of the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory have made the
William Herschel Telescope one of the most scientifically productive telescopes
in the world. The telescope played an important role in discovering the
accelerated expansion of the Universe, and it has made important contributions
in the fields of observational cosmology, gamma-ray bursts, galaxy dynamics and
star evolution. This Telescope found out the sun was not the only star in
the universe, but that it was one of many of its kind. In fact it was found
that there are bigger stars out there. Also the colours we see in the night sky
are actually hundreds of different galaxies.
The Doppler Effect
The Doppler Effect was the next step for astronomers in there knowledge of space. As seen in this video the Doppler effect is the way we see and hear light or sound. Astronomers wanted to observe the way that things in the universe moved and whether they were moving towards or away from us. When things move towards us we see a blue shift and when things move away from us we se a red shift. As they watched the universe they found that there is only a red shift. This shocked them as this showed many things moving away or expanding.