Project PHaEDRA - Henrietta Swan Leavitt #43

About the Project

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 discovered the relation between luminosity and the period of the Cepheid variables and led to the first “standard candle” with which to measure the distance to other galaxies. 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. Have questions? Want to start a discussion? Head over to our blog posts to make comments about notebooks and ask questions about transcribing. PLEASE NOTE: Please follow these special instructions when transcribing these notebooks.

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Completed!

Project Progress (details)
57 pages completed

144

Contributing
members

57

Total
pages