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On the night of October 5–6, 1923, Edwin Hubble photographed a star in the Andromeda Galaxy that helped show it lay beyond the Milky Way. The observation did not discover Andromeda itself: it supplied evidence that the spiral nebula was a separate galaxy. Hubble announced that conclusion in January 1925.
What did Hubble discover in 1923?
Hubble’s discovery-associated observation was a photographic plate of Andromeda, also known as M31, made with the Hooker 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory. Carnegie Science’s archive identifies the image as plate H335H, “Hooker plate 335 by Hubble,” and dates it to the night of October 5–6, 1923. Carnegie Science’s H335H plate archive
The distinction matters: astronomers already knew Andromeda as a spiral nebula. What Hubble established was that it was not a nearby object inside the Milky Way, but a galaxy beyond it. In the early 1920s, that question was part of a larger debate over whether spiral nebulae belonged to our galaxy or were separate “island universes.” Carnegie Science’s history of Hubble and other discoveries
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Hubble recognized a variable star
On the plate, Hubble initially marked one star with an “N,” treating it as a possible nova. After observing its changing brightness, he crossed out the letter and wrote “VAR!”—a note that it was variable. The archive identifies the star as a Cepheid variable. Carnegie Science’s H335H plate archive
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A Cepheid provided a way to estimate distance
Cepheids change brightness in a regular cycle. Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s earlier work had shown that a Cepheid’s pulsation period is related to its intrinsic luminosity. Astronomers could use that relationship to estimate how far away the star—and, in this case, its host galaxy—was. Leavitt’s work supplied the distance method; Hubble applied it to the Cepheid in Andromeda. Carnegie Science’s account of the discovery
The resulting distance placed M31 outside the boundaries then attributed to the Milky Way. That was the crucial inference: Andromeda was an independent galaxy, not a component of our own. The evidence changed the scale of the known universe. Carnegie Science’s history of Hubble and other discoveries
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When was the discovery announced?
The observation and its public announcement were separate events. Hubble made the plate on the night of October 5–6, 1923; Carnegie Science says he reported the result to the American Astronomical Society in January 1925, more than a year later. So October 5 is associated with the observation, not a public announcement that day. Carnegie Science’s account of the discovery
What is Hubble’s “VAR!” plate?
“VAR!” refers to Hubble’s handwritten annotation on the Andromeda plate H335H. It records his reclassification of the star first marked as a possible nova after he found it varied in brightness. The plate is a surviving piece of the evidence behind the distance argument—not a photograph that, by itself, shows the galaxy’s distance. Carnegie Science’s H335H plate archive
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