Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studyi
Rubin with her collection of antique globes, c. 1985
Rubin in 1972, measuring spectra at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
Rubin in the 1970s using Kitt Peak National Observatory's 36-inch telescope with Kent Ford's image tube spectrograph attached
The rotation curve of a disc galaxy is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy's centre. It is typically rendered graphically
Comparison of rotating disc galaxies in the present day (left) and the distant Universe (right).