Who first showed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars?

Question

Who first showed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars?

Answer 1

I don't know who was the first person to 'demonstrate' the theory.

The 'discovery' of the Milky Way is credited to the ancient philosopher Democritus who was the first person in history to make the assumption that the Milky Way existed and was make up of billions of stars.

Galileo made important observations of the heavens, but even through his telescopes, stars still appeared as points of light. I don't believe we can credit him with the title of dicoverer.

Hubble discovered that other glaxies existed outside our own. Herschel was the first to theorize the idea. But it was Hubble who demonstrated it using redshift.

Who first 'showed' that the Milky Way was made up of many stars might be the person who used equipment detecting that other stars existed in the sky that had similar chemical makeup of our own sun. This would be the only way to demonstrate the theory.

Answer 2

Since anyone (on the right part of the Earth) can look up and see the Milky Way edge-on, and see that it is clearly made of billions of points of light, it does not really need to be demonstrated.

That being said, scientific evidence of course corroborates the idea that the Milky Way is not actually the milk of a goddess, but is rather, as Democritus of Greece first stated, a collection of a vast number of stars.

Answer 3

Herschel. He discovered that the Andromeda "nebula" was really another galaxy, like the one we're in. As is the Whirlpool galaxy, and a host of others.

Answer 4

I suppose you could make the arguement for Herschel, but I'll bet you've overlooked somebody else.