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The debate took place on April 26, 1920, in the hall of the United States National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Shapley took the side that spiral nebulae (what are now called galaxies) are inside our Milky Way, while Curtis took the side that the spiral nebulae are "island universes" far outside our own Milky Way and comparable in size ...
Later in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble showed that Andromeda was far outside the Milky Way by measuring Cepheid variable stars, proving that Curtis was correct. [6] It is now known that the Milky Way is only one of as many as an estimated 200 billion (2 × 10 11) [7] to 2 trillion (2 × 10 12) or more galaxies in the observable Universe.
This is in contrast to extragalactic astronomy, which is the study of everything outside our galaxy, including all other galaxies. Galactic astronomy should not be confused with galaxy formation and evolution, which is the general study of galaxies, their formation, structure, components, dynamics, interactions, and the range of forms they take.
The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
William Herschel found that the Solar System is moving through space within our disk-shaped Milky Way galaxy. Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way galaxy is just one of many galaxies in the universe. Examination of the galaxy's position and motion in the universe led to the Big Bang theory and the whole of modern cosmology.
The study of stars and stellar evolution is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe. The astrophysics of stars has been determined through observation and theoretical understanding; and from computer simulations of the interior. [99] Star formation occurs in dense regions of dust and gas, known as giant molecular clouds.
5th century BC – Democritus proposes that the bright band in the night sky known as the Milky Way might consist of stars. 4th century BC – Aristotle believes the Milky Way to be caused by "the ignition of the fiery exhalation of some stars which were large, numerous and close together" and that the "ignition takes place in the upper part of the atmosphere, in the region of the world which ...
Structure formation began some time after recombination, when the early universe cooled enough from expansion to allow the formation of stable hydrogen and helium atoms. [7]: 6 At this point the cosmic microwave background(CMB) is emitted; many careful measurements of the CMB provide key information about the initial state of the universe before structure formation.