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Harvard Computers
The Harvard Computers were a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The team was directed by Edward Charles Pickering (1877 to 1919) and, following his death in 1919, by Annie Jump Cannon. Other computers on the team included Mary Anna Draper, Williamina Fleming, Anna Winlock, and Florence Cushman. Although these women started primarily as calculators, they made significant contributions to astronomy, much of which they published in research articles. History In the 19th century, the Harvard College Observatory faced the challenge of working through an overwhelming amount of astronomical data due to improvements in photographic technology. Harvard Observatory's director, Edward Charles Pickering, hired a group of women to analyze the astronomical data recorded on the growing Harvard Plate Stacks, collection of plate negatives. While Pickering was the director of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Charles Pickering's Harem 13 May 1913
Edward is an English language, English male name. It is derived from the Old English, Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements ''wikt:ead#Old English, ēad'' "wealth, fortunate; prosperous" and ''wikt:weard#Old English, weard'' "guardian, protector”. History The name Edward was very popular in Anglo-Saxon England, but the rule of the House of Normandy, Norman and House of Plantagenet, Plantagenet dynasties had effectively ended its use amongst the upper classes. The popularity of the name was revived when Henry III of England, Henry III named his firstborn son, the future Edward I of England, Edward I, as part of his efforts to promote a cult around Edward the Confessor, for whom Henry had a deep admiration. Variant forms The name has been adopted in the Iberian Peninsula#Modern Iberia, Iberian peninsula since the 15th century, due to Edward, King of Portugal, whose mother was English. The Spanish/Portuguese forms of the name are Eduardo and Duarte (name), Duart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JHU Press
Johns Hopkins University Press (also referred to as JHU Press or JHUP) is the publishing division of Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and is the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The press publishes books and journals, and operates other divisions including fulfillment and electronic databases. Its headquarters are in Charles Village section of Baltimore, Maryland. In 2017, after the retirement of Kathleen Keane, who is credited with modernizing JHU Press for the digital age, the university appointed new director Barbara Pope. Overview Daniel Coit Gilman, the first president of Johns Hopkins University, inaugurated the press in 1878. The press began as the university's Publication Agency, publishing the '' American Journal of Mathematics'' in its first year and the '' American Chemical Journal'' in its second. It published its first book, ''Sidney Lanier: A Memorial Tribute'', in 1881 to honor the poet who was one of the univer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stellar Evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. Depending on the mass of the star, its lifetime can range from a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the current age of the universe. The table shows the lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses. All stars are formed from Gravitational collapse, collapsing clouds of gas and dust, often called nebulae or molecular clouds. Over the course of millions of years, these protostars settle down into a state of equilibrium, becoming what is known as a main sequence star. Nuclear fusion powers a star for most of its existence. Initially the energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen atoms at the stellar core, core of the main-sequence star. Later, as the preponderance of atoms at the core becomes helium, stars like the Sun begin to fuse hydrogen along a spherical shell surrounding the core. This process causes the st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Sawyer Hogg
Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg (August 1, 1905 – January 28, 1993) was an American-Canadian astronomer who pioneered research into globular clusters and variable stars. She was the first female president of several astronomical organizations and a scientist when many universities would not award scientific degrees to women. Her dedication to sharing astronomy with the wider public lead to scientific advocacy and Science journalism, journalism including columns in the ''Toronto Star'' ("With the Stars", 1951–81) and the ''Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada'' ("Out of Old Books", 1946–65). She was considered a "great scientist and a gracious person" over a career of sixty years.Shearer, B.F., & Shearer, B.S. (1997). ''Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary'' Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Early life Born in Lowell, Massachusetts on August 1, 1905, Helen was the second daughter of banker Edward Everett Sawyer and former teacher Carr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Association Of Variable Star Observers
The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is an international nonprofit organization. Founded in 1911, the organization focuses on coordinating, analyzing, publishing, and archiving variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers. The AAVSO creates records that establish light curves depicting the variation in brightness of a star over time. The AAVSO makes these records available to professional astronomers, researchers, and educators. Professional astronomers do not have the resources to monitor every variable star. Hence, astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can make significant contributions to research. In 2011, the 100th year of the AAVSO's existence, the twenty-millionth variable star observation was received into their database. The AAVSO International Database (AID) has stored over thirty-five million observations as of 2019. The organization receives nearly 1,000,000 observations annually from an estimated amount of 2,00 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Mayall
Margaret Walton Mayall (January 27, 1902 – December 6, 1995) was an American astronomer. She was the director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) from 1949 to 1973. Early life and education Mayall (born Margaret Lyle Walton) was born in Iron Hill, Maryland, on 27 January 1902. She attended the University of Delaware, where her interest in astronomy grew after taking math and chemistry courses. She then moved to Swarthmore College, where she received her Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics in 1924. She earned an MA in Astronomy from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, in 1928 and worked as a research assistant and astronomer at Harvard College Observatory from 1924 to 1954, initially working with Annie Jump Cannon on classifying star spectra and estimating star brightness. During this time, she would spend summers working with Margaret Hardwood of the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket, MA, where she became interested in researching variable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cepheid Variable
A Cepheid variable () is a type of variable star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature. It changes in brightness, with a well-defined stable period (typically 1–100 days) and amplitude. Cepheids are important cosmic benchmarks for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances; a strong direct relationship exists between a Cepheid variable's luminosity and its pulsation period. This characteristic of classical Cepheids was discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt after studying thousands of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. The discovery establishes the ''true luminosity'' of a Cepheid by observing its pulsation period. This in turn gives the distance to the star by comparing its known luminosity to its observed brightness, calibrated by directly observing the parallax distance to the closest Cepheids such as RS Puppis and Polaris. Cepheids change brightness due to the κ–mechanism, which occurs when opacity in a star increases wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Wilson Observatory
The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an Observatory#Astronomical observatories, astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson (California), Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, California, Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles. The observatory contains two historically important telescopes: the #100-inch Hooker telescope, Hooker telescope, which was the largest aperture telescope in the world from its completion in 1917 to 1949, and the #60-inch telescope, 60-inch telescope which was the largest operational telescope in the world when it was completed in 1908. It also contains the Snow solar telescope completed in 1905, the solar tower completed in 1908, the solar tower completed in 1912, and the CHARA array, built by Georgia State University, which became fully operational in 2004 and was the largest optical interferometer in the world at its completion. Due to the inversion (meteorol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Draper
Henry Draper (March 7, 1837 – November 20, 1882) was an American medical doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography. Life and work Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished doctor, chemist, botanist, and professor at New York University; he was also the first to photograph the moon through a telescope (1840). Draper's mother was Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner, daughter of the personal physician to the Emperor of Brazil. His niece, Antonia Maury was also an astronomer. He graduated from New York University School of Medicine, at the age of 20, in 1857. He worked first as a physician at Bellevue Hospital, and later as both a professor and dean of medicine at New York University (NYU). On May 31, 1862, he joined S Company, 12th New York Infantry Regiment as a surgeon along with his brother John Christopher, who joined as an assistant surgeon. They served until October 8, 1862. In 1867 he married Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Draper Catalogue
The ''Henry Draper Catalogue'' (HD) is an astronomical star catalogue published between 1918 and 1924, giving spectroscopic classifications for 225,300 stars; it was later expanded by the ''Henry Draper Extension'' (HDE), published between 1925 and 1936, which gave classifications for 46,850 more stars, and by the ''Henry Draper Extension Charts'' (HDEC), published from 1937 to 1949 in the form of charts, which gave classifications for 86,933 more stars. In all, 359,083 stars were classified as of August 2017. The HD catalogue is named after Henry Draper, an amateur astronomer, and covers the entire sky almost completely down to an apparent photographic magnitude of about 9; the extensions added fainter stars in certain areas of the sky. The construction of the ''Henry Draper Catalogue'' was part of a pioneering effort to classify stellar spectra, and its catalogue numbers are commonly used as a way of identifying stars. History The origin of the ''Henry Draper Catalogue'' d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photographic Plate
Photographic plates preceded film as the primary medium for capturing images in photography. These plates, made of metal or glass and coated with a light-sensitive emulsion, were integral to early photographic processes such as heliography, daguerreotypes, and photogravure. Glass plates, thinner than standard window glass, became widely used in the late 19th century for their clarity and reliability. Although largely replaced by film during the 20th century, plates continued to be used for specialised scientific and medical purposes until the late 20th century. History Glass plates were far superior to film for research-quality imaging because they were stable and less likely to bend or distort, especially in large-format frames for wide-field imaging. Early plates used the wet collodion process. The wet plate process was replaced late in the 19th century by gelatin dry plates. A view camera nicknamed "The Mammoth" weighing was built by George R. Lawrence in 1899, sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
