 Over the last century, astronomers have discovered many new and mysterious cosmic objects, such as quasars, black holes, gamma ray bursts and distant exoplanets. Recent discoveries may be impressive, but in just a few remarkable years in the 1920s, one man single-handedly changed our perception of our place in the universe. His name was Dr. Edwin Powell Hubbell. In Missouri in 1889, Edwin Powell Hubbell developed an early passion for astronomy after receiving his first telescope when he was just eight years old. In 1917, whilst working on his doctorate, Hubbell received a life-changing job offer from George Ellery Hale, founder of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. But the opportunity came at a bad time. The United States had just entered World War I and Hubbell enlisted in the military. In 1919, Major Hubbell returned from the war and immediately traveled to the Mount Wilson Observatory. Still in uniform, he arrived and announced that he was ready to start observing. In 1923, Hubbell made his first important discovery using the most advanced technology of the time, the 2.5-meter Hooker Telescope. Measuring the distance to pulsating stars, known as cephide variables, he discovered that they reside in galaxies outside our own. At the time, the prevailing view was that the universe consisted only of the Milky Way galaxy. Hubbell's discovery that our galaxy is just one of many forever changed the way we view our place in the universe. Following this groundbreaking discovery, Hubbell began to sort and classify the galaxies he discovered. He arranged them according to their visual appearance, into spirals, ellipticals, lenticulars and those with an irregular appearance. This became known as the Hubbell sequence and it is still the most popular system for classifying galaxies. Hubbell's greatest achievement came in 1929 when he determined that the light we receive from galaxies is redder the further away they are from us. From this, he was able to deduce that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes. Named Hubbell's Law, the observational discovery of this relationship overturned the conventional view of a static universe and demonstrated that the universe itself was expanding, providing the first observational evidence for the Big Bang Theory. Hubbell spent the later part of his career, campaigning for astronomy to be recognized as an area of physics by the Nobel Prize Committee. The committee finally made astronomical work eligible for the physics prize in 1953 but Hubbell was never to know as he had died just a few months earlier. Had the decision come sooner, Hubbell may well have lived to receive one. Thirty years after Edwin Hubbell's death, NASA and the European Space Agency christened their new space telescope after Edwin Hubbell. Hubbell was the obvious choice when naming a new observatory that would revolutionize the field of astronomy. Edwin Hubbell changed our perception of the universe and our place within it and his spirit of discovery lives on today through the Hubbell Space Telescope. Now that you've caught up with Hubbell, make sure to get the latest from the ground too. The ESOcast highlights the best of the European Southern Observatory and its powerful telescopes that observe from high in the Chilean Andes at the Southern Hemisphere's best known sites for astronomical observations. One science leak. I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene. That's all right, I don't mind a bit. You've got the flag up now. You can see the stars. I'm going to pick up now. Are you getting a TV picture now, Hampton? Neil, yes, we are getting a TV picture. You're going to have to go in now. That's one small step for man.