What did Vesto Slipher primarily find in his early spectroscopic work on nebulae?
Answer
The vast majority of nebulae exhibited redshift.
Vesto Slipher conducted extensive spectroscopic measurements on the fuzzy spiral nebulae in the early 1900s, predating Hubble's comprehensive velocity-distance correlation. Slipher's crucial, though initially misinterpreted, finding was that nearly all the objects he measured showed a clear redshift. This meant the objects were, for the most part, moving away from Earth. While this indicated motion, the significance of this widespread recession was not fully grasped until Hubble combined this velocity data with accurate distance measurements, revealing that the recession velocity was systematically related to how far away the galaxy was.
Related Questions
What profound realization did Edwin Hubble bring to astronomy about the cosmos?What was the key breakthrough for measuring distances to spiral nebulae?What relationship did Henrietta Swan Leavitt establish for Cepheid variables?What spectral shift occurs when a galaxy moves away from the observer?What did Vesto Slipher primarily find in his early spectroscopic work on nebulae?What is the essence of Hubble's Law, relating recessional velocity ($v$) and distance ($d$)?What did the near-perfect proportionality Hubble plotted imply about galactic motion?If the expansion is not centered on the Milky Way, what describes the pattern observed from any other galaxy?What conceptual leap cemented Hubble's contribution regarding light shifting?What physical quantity does the inverse of the Hubble Constant ($1/H_0$) provide an estimate for?