Edwin Hubble Edwin Hubble Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology and is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of all time. Hubble discovered that many objects previously thought to be clouds of dust and gas and classified as "nebulae" were actually galaxies beyond the Milky Way. He used the strong direct relationship between a classical Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period (discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt) for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances. Hubble provided evidence
To Sail Beyond the Sunset To Sail Beyond the Sunset To Sail Beyond the Sunset is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1987. It was the last novel published before his death in 1988. The title is taken from the poem "Ulysses", by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The stanza of which it is a part, quoted by a character in the novel, is as follows: <poem> ... my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. </poem> It is the final part of the "Lazarus Long" cycle of stories, involving