ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1926, construction of the house the Hubbies had dreamed about while visiting the Palazzo Vecchio on their honeymoon was nearing completion. Edwin Hubble had come upon the heavily wooded site during one of his long Sunday walks and had taken Grace to see it just before they were married. Hubble purchased many books on the subject, including works of primitive and ancient religions, church histories, commentaries of the great theologians, the writings of mystics and saints. Slipping, night after night, silent and alone, past the distant shoals of the nebulae would too many constitute the equivalent of a religious experience. The equipment had performed beautifully when trained on the larger and brighter nebulae, but by the mid-1920s the old rules no longer applied. The idea of comparing the apparent brightness of two objects thought to have the same true brightness was then applied to the nebulae themselves.
