11th century — Al-Biruni, another Persian astronomer, describes the Milky Way galaxy as a collection of fragments of numerous nebulous stars.[5]
11th century — Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham), an Arabian astronomer, refutes Aristotle's theory on the Milky Way by making the first attempt at observing and measuring the Milky Way's parallax,[6] and he thus "determined that because the Milky Way had no parallax, it was very remote from the Earth and did not belong to the atmosphere".[7]
12th century — Avempace (Ibn Bajjah) of Islamic Spain proposes the Milky Way to be made up of many stars but that it appears to be a continuous image due to the effect of refraction in the Earth's atmosphere.[1]
14th century — Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya of Syria proposes the Milky Way galaxy to be "a myriad of tiny stars packed together in the sphere of the fixed stars" and that these stars are larger than planets.[8]
1612 — Simon Marius using a moderate telescope observes Andromeda and describes as a "flame seen through horn".[10]
1750 — Thomas Wright discusses galaxies and the flattened shape of the Milky Way and speculates nebulae as separate.[11]
1755 — Immanuel Kant drawing on Wright's work conjectures our galaxy is a rotating disk of stars held together by gravity, and that the nebulae are separate such galaxies; he calls them Island Universes.
1774 — Charles Messier releases a preliminary list of 45 Messier objects, three of which turn out to be the galaxies including Andromeda and Triangulum. By 1781 the final published list grows to 103 objects, 34 of which turn out to be galaxies.
1785 — William Herschel carried the first attempt to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun in it by carefully counting the number of stars in different regions of the sky. He produced a diagram of the shape of the galaxy with the solar system close to the center.
1845 — Lord Rosse discovers a nebula with a distinct spiral shape.
Early 20th centuryedit
1912 — Vesto Slipher's spectrographic studies of spiral nebulae find high Doppler shifts indicating recessional velocity.
1917 — Heber Curtis finds novae in Andromeda Nebula M31 were ten magnitudes fainter than normal, giving a distance estimate of 150,000 parsecs supporting the "island universes" or independent galaxies hypothesis for spiral nebulae.
1918 — Harlow Shapley demonstrates that globular clusters are arranged in a spheroid or halo whose center is not the Earth, and hypothesizes, correctly, that its center is the Galactic Center of the galaxy,
26 April 1920 — Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtisdebate whether Andromeda Nebula is within the Milky Way. Curtis notes dark lanes in Andromeda resembling the dust clouds in the Milky Way, as well as significant Doppler shift.
1922 — Ernst Öpik distance determination supports Andromeda as extra-galactic object.
1954 — Walter Baade and Rudolph Minkowski identify the extragalactic optical counterpart of the radio source Cygnus A.
1959 — Hundreds of radio sources are detected by the Cambridge Interferometer which produces the 3C catalogue. Many of these are later found to be distant quasars and radio galaxies.
1960 — Thomas Matthews determines the radio position of the 3C source 3C 48 to within 5".
1960 — Allan Sandage optically studies 3C 48 and observes an unusual blue quasistellar object.
1962 — Cyril Hazard, M. B. Mackey, and A. J. Shimmins use lunar occultations to determine a precise position for the quasar3C 273 and deduce that it is a double source.
1963 — Maarten Schmidt identifies the redshifted Balmer lines from the quasar 3C 273.
1973 — Jeremiah Ostriker and James Peebles discover that the amount of visible matter in the disks of typical spiral galaxies is not enough for Newtonian gravitation to keep the disks from flying apart or drastically changing shape.
1973 — Donald Gudehus finds that the diameters of the brightest cluster galaxies have increased due to merging, the diameters of the faintest cluster galaxies have decreased due to tidal distention, and that the Virgo cluster has a substantial peculiar velocity.
1976 — Sandra Faber and Robert Jackson discover the Faber-Jackson relation between the luminosity of an elliptical galaxy and the velocity dispersion in its center. In 1991 the relation is revised by Donald Gudehus.
1978 — Steve Gregory and Laird Thompson describe the Coma supercluster.
1978 — Donald Gudehus finds evidence that clusters of galaxies are moving at several hundred kilometers per second relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation.
1978 — Vera Rubin, Kent Ford, N. Thonnard, and Albert Bosma measure the rotation curves of several spiral galaxies and find significant deviations from what is predicted by the Newtonian gravitation of visible stars.
1985 — Robert Antonucci and J. Miller discover that the Seyfert II galaxy NGC 1068 has broad lines which can only be seen in polarized reflected light.
1989 — Margaret Geller and John Huchra discover the "Great Wall", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light years long and 200 million wide, but only 15 million light years thick.
1990 — Michael Rowan-Robinson and Tom Broadhurst discover that the IRAS galaxy IRAS F10214+4724 is the brightest known object in the Universe.
1991 — Donald Gudehus discovers a serious systematic bias in certain cluster galaxy data (surface brightness vs. radius parameter, and the method) which affect galaxy distances and evolutionary history; he devises a new distance indicator, the reduced galaxian radius parameter, , which is free of biases.
1992 — First detection of large-scale structure in the cosmic microwave background indicating the seeds of the first clusters of galaxies in the early Universe.
2000 — Data from several cosmic microwave background experiments give strong evidence that the Universe is "flat" (space is not curved, although space-time is), with important implications for the formation of large-scale structure
2013 — The galaxy Z8 GND 5296 is confirmed by spectroscopy to be one of the most distant galaxies found up to this time. Formed just 700 million years after the Big Bang, expansion of the universe has carried it to its current location, about 13 billion light years away from Earth (30 billion light years comoving distance).[19]
2020 — Astronomers report the discovery of a large cavity in the Ophiuchus Supercluster, first detected in 2016 and originating from a supermassive black hole with the mass of 10 million solar masses. The cavity is a result of the largest known explosion in the Universe. The formerly active galactic nucleus created it by emitting radiation and particle jets, possibly as a result of a spike in supply of gas to the black hole that could have occurred if a galaxy fell into the centre of the cavity.[30][31][32]
2020 — The South Pole Wall is a massive cosmic structure formed by a giant wall of galaxies (a galaxy filament) that extends across at least 1.37 billion light-years of space, and is located approximately a half billion light-years away.[37][38][39][40][41][42]
2022 — JWST detects CEERS-93316, a candidate high-redshift galaxy, with an estimated redshift of approximately z = 16.7, corresponding to 235.8 million years[45] after the Big Bang.[46] If confirmed, it is one of the earliest and most distant known galaxies observed.[47]
^Mohamed, Mohaini (2000). Great Muslim Mathematicians. Penerbit UTM. pp. 49–50. ISBN 983-52-0157-9.
^Hamid-Eddine Bouali; Mourad Zghal; Zohra Ben Lakhdar (2005). "Popularisation of Optical Phenomena: Establishing the First Ibn Al-Haytham Workshop on Photography" (PDF). The Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
^Livingston, John W. (1971). "Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah: A Fourteenth Century Defense against Astrological Divination and Alchemical Transmutation". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 91 (1). American Oriental Society: 96–103 [99]. doi:10.2307/600445. JSTOR 600445.
^Horvath I.; Hakkila J. & Bagoly Z. (2014). "Possible structure in the GRB sky distribution at redshift two". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 561: L12. arXiv:1401.0533. Bibcode:2014A&A...561L..12H. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201323020. S2CID 24224684.
^Horvath I.; Hakkila J. & Bagoly Z. (2013). "The largest structure of the Universe, defined by Gamma-Ray Bursts". arXiv:1311.1104. Bibcode:2013arXiv1311.1104H. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Klotz, Irene (2013-11-19). "Universe's Largest Structure is a Cosmic Conundrum". discovery. Retrieved 2013-11-22.
^Tully, R. Brent; Courtois, Hélène; Hoffman, Yehuda; Pomarède, Daniel (Sep 2014). "The Laniakea supercluster of galaxies". Nature. 513 (7516): 71–73. arXiv:1409.0880. Bibcode:2014Natur.513...71T. doi:10.1038/nature13674. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 25186900. S2CID 205240232.
^"Newly identified galactic supercluster is home to the Milky Way". National Radio Astronomy Observatory. ScienceDaily. 3 September 2014.
^Irene Klotz (2014-09-03). "New map shows Milky Way lives in Laniakea galaxy complex". Reuters.
^Elizabeth Gibney (3 September 2014). "Earth's new address: 'Solar System, Milky Way, Laniakea'". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15819.
^Quenqua, Douglas (3 September 2014). "Astronomers Give Name to Network of Galaxies". New York Times. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
^Carlisle, Camille M. (3 September 2014). "Laniakea: Our Home Supercluster". Sky and Telescope. Retrieved 3 September 2014.
^Overbye, Dennis (6 March 2020). "This Black Hole Blew a Hole in the Cosmos - The galaxy cluster Ophiuchus was doing just fine until WISEA J171227.81-232210.7 — a black hole several billion times as massive as our sun — burped on it". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
^"Biggest cosmic explosion ever detected left huge dent in space". The Guardian. 27 February 2020. Retrieved 28 February 2020.
^Giacintucci, S.; Markevitch, M.; Johnston-Hollitt, M.; Wik, D. R.; Wang, Q. H. S.; Clarke, T. E. (27 February 2020). "Discovery of a Giant Radio Fossil in the Ophiuchus Galaxy Cluster". The Astrophysical Journal. 891 (1): 1. arXiv:2002.01291. Bibcode:2020ApJ...891....1G. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab6a9d. ISSN 1538-4357. S2CID 211020555.
^Overbye, Dennis (20 May 2020). "The Galaxy That Grew Up Too Fast". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
^"ALMA discovers massive rotating disk in early universe". phys.org. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
^Strickland, Ashley. "Astronomers find the Wolfe Disk, an unlikely galaxy, in the distant universe". CNN. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
^Neeleman, Marcel; Prochaska, J. Xavier; Kanekar, Nissim; Rafelski, Marc (May 2020). "A cold, massive, rotating disk galaxy 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang". Nature. 581 (7808): 269–272. arXiv:2005.09661. Bibcode:2020Natur.581..269N. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2276-y. PMID 32433621. S2CID 218718343.
^Pomarède, Daniel; et al. (10 July 2020). "Cosmicflows-3: The South Pole Wall". The Astrophysical Journal. 897 (2): 133. arXiv:2007.04414. Bibcode:2020ApJ...897..133P. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab9952. S2CID 220425419.
^Pomerede, D.; et al. (January 2020). "The South Pole Wall". Harvard University. Vol. 235. p. 453.01. Bibcode:2020AAS...23545301P. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
^Staff (10 July 2020). "Astronomers map massive structure beyond Laniakea Supercluster". University of Hawaii. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
^Overbye, Dennis (10 July 2020). "Beyond the Milky Way, a Galactic Wall - Astronomers have discovered a vast assemblage of galaxies hidden behind our own, in the "zone of avoidance."". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
^Mann, Adam (10 July 2020). "Astronomers discover South Pole Wall, a gigantic structure stretching 1.4 billion light-years across". Live Science. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
^Starr, Michelle (14 July 2020). "A Giant 'Wall' of Galaxies Has Been Found Stretching Across The Universe". ScienceAlert.com. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
^"Largest-ever 3D map of the universe released by scientists". Sky News. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
^"No need to Mind the Gap: Astrophysicists fill in 11 billion years of our universe's expansion history". SDSS. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
^Staff (1 August 2022). "Edinburgh astronomers find most distant galaxy - Early data from a new space telescope has enabled Edinburgh astronomers to locate the most distant galaxy ever found". University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
^
Planck Collaboration (2020). "Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 641. page A6 (see PDF page 15, Table 2: "Age/Gyr", last column). arXiv:1807.06209. Bibcode:2020A&A...641A...6P. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201833910. S2CID 119335614.
^Donnan, C. T.; McLeod, D. J.; Dunlop, J. S.; McLure, R. J.; Carnall, A. C.; Begley, R.; Cullen, F.; Hamadouche, M. L.; Bowler, R. A. A.; McCracken, H. J.; Milvang-Jensen, B.; Moneti, A.; Targett, T. (2023). "The evolution of the galaxy UV luminosity function at redshifts z ≃ 8 – 15 from deep JWST and ground-based near-infrared imaging". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 518 (4): 6011–6040. arXiv:2207.12356. doi:10.1093/mnras/stac3472.