Hello.
I hope my query qualifies as a quick question, but if not, no worries. My question deals with determining the distance and age of light being emitted from other stars or galaxies.
I think (hope) I understand the basics of the Doppler effect, and how we discern whether a galaxy is moving away from or toward our galaxy, i.e. the red shift and blue shift.
But how do we determine the distance?
This excerpt is from Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell".
In 1923, Hubble discovered that faint patches of light, called nebulae, were in fact other galaxies, vast collections of stars like our sun but at a greater distance. In order for them to appear so small and faint, the distances had to be so great that light from them would have taken millions or even billions of years to reach us. This indicated that the beginning of the universe couldn't have been just a few thousand years ago.
So small and faint?
I understand that this book is for the laymen, me, and doesn't go into too great of detail, but I was hoping some from this forum could help satiate my curiosity, Cavediver, maybe, or anyone else knowledgeable in astronomy or cosmology.
Thank you, kindly.
moved here by AdminJar
{Note: Source of this message/new topic is here. - Adminnemooseus}
This message has been edited by AdminJar, 04-25-2006 10:04 AM
This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-08-2006 03:53 PM