Hubble's lawHubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther they are, the faster they are moving away from Earth. The velocity of the galaxies has been determined by their redshift, a shift of the light they emit toward the red end of the visible spectrum. Hubble's law is considered the first observational basis for the expansion of the universe, and today it serves as one of the pieces of evidence most often cited in support of the Big Bang model.
Hubble Space TelescopeThe Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories.
Age of the universeIn physical cosmology, the age of the universe is the time elapsed since the Big Bang. Astronomers have derived two different measurements of the age of the universe: a measurement based on direct observations of an early state of the universe, which indicate an age of 13.787 billion years as interpreted with the Lambda-CDM concordance model as of 2021; and a measurement based on the observations of the local, modern universe, which suggest a younger age.
Cosmic distance ladderThe cosmic distance ladder (also known as the extragalactic distance scale) is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A direct distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible only for those objects that are "close enough" (within about a thousand parsecs) to Earth. The techniques for determining distances to more distant objects are all based on various measured correlations between methods that work at close distances and methods that work at larger distances.
HipparcosHipparcos was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial objects on the sky. This permitted the first high-precision measurements of the intrinsic brightnesses (compared to the less precise apparent brightness), proper motions, and parallaxes of stars, enabling better calculations of their distance and tangential velocity.
Hubble bubble (astronomy)In astronomy, a Hubble bubble would be "a departure of the local value of the Hubble constant from its globally averaged value," or, more technically, "a local monopole in the peculiar velocity field, perhaps caused by a local void in the mass density." The Hubble constant, named for astronomer Edwin Hubble, whose work made clear the expansion of the universe, measures the rate at which expansion occurs. In accordance with the Copernican principle that the Earth is not in a central, specially favored position, one would expect that measuring this constant at any point in the universe would yield the same value.
Cosmological constantIn cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: Λ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is the constant coefficient of a term that Albert Einstein temporarily added to his field equations of general relativity. He later removed it. Much later it was revived and reinterpreted as the energy density of space, or vacuum energy, that arises in quantum mechanics. It is closely associated with the concept of dark energy.
Dark energyIn physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the universe does not expand at a constant rate; rather, the universe's expansion is accelerating. Understanding the universe's evolution requires knowledge of its starting conditions and composition. Before these observations, scientists thought that all forms of matter and energy in the universe would only cause the expansion to slow down over time.
Lambda-CDM modelThe ΛCDM (Lambda cold dark matter) or Lambda-CDM model is a parameterization of the Big Bang cosmological model in which the universe contains three major components: first, a cosmological constant denoted by Lambda (Greek Λ) associated with dark energy; second, the postulated cold dark matter (abbreviated CDM); and third, ordinary matter.
Hubble volumeIn cosmology, a Hubble volume (named for the astronomer Edwin Hubble) or Hubble sphere, Hubble bubble, subluminal sphere, causal sphere and sphere of causality is a spherical region of the observable universe surrounding an observer beyond which objects recede from that observer at a rate greater than the speed of light due to the expansion of the universe. The Hubble volume is approximately equal to 1031 cubic light years (or about 1079 cubic meters).
Expansion of the universeThe expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion; the universe does not expand "into" anything and does not require space to exist "outside" it. To any observer in the universe, it appears that all but the nearest galaxies (which are bound by gravity) recede at speeds that are proportional to their distance from the observer, on average.
Methods of detecting exoplanetsAny planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, very few of the exoplanets reported have been observed directly, with even fewer being resolved from their host star.
Cepheid variableA Cepheid variable (ˈsɛfi.ɪd,_ˈsiːfi-) is a type of variable star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature. It changes in brightness, with a well-defined stable period and amplitude. Cepheids are important cosmic benchmarks for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances. A strong direct relationship exists between a Cepheid variable's luminosity and its pulsation period. This characteristic of classical Cepheids was discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt after studying thousands of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds.
Cosmological horizonA cosmological horizon is a measure of the distance from which one could possibly retrieve information. This observable constraint is due to various properties of general relativity, the expanding universe, and the physics of Big Bang cosmology. Cosmological horizons set the size and scale of the observable universe. This article explains a number of these horizons. Particle horizon The particle horizon (also called the cosmological horizon, the comoving horizon, or the cosmic light horizon) is the maximum distance from which light from particles could have traveled to the observer in the age of the universe.
Big BangThe Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form. These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure.
Pea galaxyA Pea galaxy, also referred to as a Pea or Green Pea, might be a type of luminous blue compact galaxy that is undergoing very high rates of star formation. Pea galaxies are so-named because of their small size and greenish appearance in the images taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). "Pea" galaxies were first discovered in 2007 by the volunteer citizen scientists within the forum section of the online astronomy project Galaxy Zoo (GZ), part of the Zooniverse web portal.
Accelerating expansion of the universeObservations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, such that the velocity at which a distant galaxy recedes from the observer is continuously increasing with time. The accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered during 1998 by two independent projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which both used distant type Ia supernovae to measure the acceleration.
Binary starA binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in which case they are called visual binaries. Many visual binaries have long orbital periods of several centuries or millennia and therefore have orbits which are uncertain or poorly known.
Messier 87Messier 87 (also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486, generally abbreviated to M87) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo that contains several trillion stars. One of the largest and most massive galaxies in the local universe, it has a large population of globular clusters—about 15,000 compared with the 150–200 orbiting the Milky Way—and a jet of energetic plasma that originates at the core and extends at least , traveling at a relativistic speed.
Radial velocityThe radial velocity or line-of-sight velocity, also known as radial speed or range rate, of a target with respect to an observer is the rate of change of the distance or range between the two points. It is equivalent to the vector projection of the target-observer relative velocity onto the relative direction connecting the two points. In astronomy, the point is usually taken to be the observer on Earth, so the radial velocity then denotes the speed with which the object moves away from the Earth (or approaches it, for a negative radial velocity).
