Browse Projects
Project PHaEDRA - Annie Jump Cannon 14
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 Annie Jump Cannon, who in 1901 devised a robust and elegant stellar classification scheme that astronomers still use today. 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.
Project PHaEDRA - Cecilia H. Payne #1
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 early work of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered that stars, and the whole universe, were made abundantly of hydrogen -- a discovery that earned her the first PhD in Astronomy from Harvard. 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. View the special instructions for this project.
Project PHaEDRA - Henrietta Swan Leavitt #06
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.
