If you search the name "Hubble" in astronomy-related pages, you will probably be directed to beautiful pictures taken from the space telescope itself or to explanations about the false-colour display of emission nebulae which again the space telescope made very popular even in amateur circles.

But Edwin Hubble, after whom the space telecope was named, made probably his most significant scientific contribution back in 1923. He proved the extragalactic nature of the spiral nebulae which were examined so closely in the second half of the 19th century, after Lord Rosse discovered their structure in 1845.

Hubble found that some of the stars he identified in the most famous spiral, M 31, showed variability which was clearly indicative for their absolute brightness. The apparent brightness of these "Cepheids" in turn let Hubble conclude that the spiral nebulae were far outside our own Milky Way.

The frontispiece of the book "The Realm Of The Nebulae" inspired me to capture at least one of the variable stars which played such a crucial role of modern astronomy. But it wasn't this book in which I discovered the famous astrophoto. It was "Burnham's Celestial Handbook" written by Robert Burnham, jr. which guided me through my most exciting phases in my passion about astronomy. To date, I was not able to demonstrate the variability, but for me it was extremely satisfying to trace the light from stars writing astronomy history.

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