Project PHaEDRA - Henrietta Swan Leavitt #11
985 Contributions
At Harvard College Observatory (now the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), women computers studied glass plate photographs of the night sky. Here they catalogued stars, identifying variables, interpreting stellar spectra, counting galaxies, and measuring the vast distances in space. Several of them made game-changing discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. In these books, follow the work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who connected the luminosity and periodicity of certain variable stars such that we were able to understand just how big our universe is. Interested in historical women? Love astronomy? Help us transcribe the work of the Harvard Observatory's women computers and see which stars shine the brightest.
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