I am reading a book called The Day We Found The Universe by Marcia Bartusiak and am quite enjoying it. In a very wonderful way the author is laying the groundwork for how we got to Hubble, Einstein and others. Keeler was the second director of the Lick Observatory and used the Crossley Reflector to take some wonderful images of "nebula" which included galaxies. The Clark Art Institute has helpfully digitized all 70 of Keeler's posthumously published plates and you can find them at this URL: http://maca.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/p1325coll1&CISOPT... Keeler got the Crossley working and starting taking images on September 15th 1898 and worked very effectively and thoroughly but on August 12th, 1900 Keeler passed away from probably lung cancer (he was an entrenched cigar smoker since his college days). The famous astronomer Donald Osterbrock said of Keeler that due to his efforts "The day of the refractor was over, and although a few more intermediate-sized ones were built, no American professional astronomer ever thought seriously of building a very large telescope as anything but a reflector after Keeler's work with the Crossley." So Keeler it might be said, turned professional astronomy's instrument of choice from the refractor to the reflector. What Keeler's work really did was to ask the question what were the spiral nebula and could the universe be far larger than previously thought? From here this became very important to professional astronomers. Here is a link to his 4 hour image of M51 (remember this was 1899, over a 113 years ago this year). http://collections.ucolick.org/exhibits_on_line/E2E.1/Keeler_M51.html I share the images just so others can see what was being done 113 years ago and in a way, Keeler was a leader if not the leader of taking images of the "nebula". Enjoy looking at his images above. -- Jay Eads