Women in Astronomy PDF

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Final assessment on the subject of women in astronomy. Source and quotes are included....

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Astronomy Essay Women in Astronomy Space exploration has been a fascinating subject of study for thousands of years. From the first civilizations observing the sky, to the ancient Greeks who started developing theories, to today, astronomers have investigated celestial objects and have made many discoveries. Astronomy being humanity’s oldest science, men have mainly been acknowledged for being pioneers of the field. It is necessary to applaud the research made by several women that have also contributed in major ways. Indeed, Caroline Lucretia Herschel, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Annie Jump Cannon are three great examples. This essay recognizes and honours the work of these women that has forever revolutionized the world of astronomy. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born on March 16, 1750, in Germany in the town of Hanover and became a pioneer in the world of astronomy and is often considered the first professional female astronomer. Caroline’s father, Isaac Herschel, wished for her to get an education likewise her brothers. Following her father’s death, she decided to go with her two brothers, William and Alexander to Bath in England, where she learns singing. She acquires a great reputation, but her career starts to decline in April 1778. Caroline decides to follow her brother, William, who gave up on his musician job to become an astronomer. Aiding his research for many years, by executing many of the calculations of his studies, her interest in the field kept growing. William who discovered the planet Uranus, credited Caroline for her help. After this finding, she starts making her own observations using a small Newtonian telescope, and becomes a significant astronomer herself. In 1783, she makes an important finding that would kickstart her career, she discovers Messier 110, the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy, a nebula that was not included in the Messier catalogue. “A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space”. Later that year, she observed 14 more nebulae. On August 1, 1786, using a new telescope that her brother gifted her, Caroline identified an object travelling slowly through the night sky. She alerted other astronomers to announce her discovery; making her the first woman known to have discovered a comet. She went on to discover seven more comets. Caroline Herschel important discoveries have brought more knowledge to the study of the sky and made huge contributions to the field of astronomy. Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868 and was an American astronomer. Raised in a religious family, she pursues her education, and finishes college to transfer to Harvard University. Along Annie Cannon, she worked as one of the women “computers”, focusing on cataloguing stars. Throughout her career, she has identified 1777 variable stars and published her results in 1908, notifying her fellow colleagues that the brighter variables had the longer period. Leavitt has also analyzed several telescopes in order to construct and refine a logarithmic scale that orders stars by brightness. In 1913, she discovers a recurrent nova, T. Pyxidis, one of the most frequent observed recurrent novae in the sky. A nova is an “a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter and then gradually fades to its original intensity”. Henrietta Leavitt’s significant discoveries eventually changed the astronomy and prepared the path for today’s astronomers. What is now known as “Leavitt’s Law”, a study that observed the relationship between the period and luminosity of Cepheids, have allowed and helped scientists to compute

and better understand distances. At the age of 53, Henrietta dies from stomach cancer but has forever revolutionized astronomy. Annie Jump Cannon, born on December 11, 1863, was an American astronomer who remodeled the development of stellar classification. At a young age, Annie decides to dedicate her existence to astronomy and pursues her studies in mathematics, chemistry, biology and economics, which would later on help her make great discoveries. In 1896, she becomes a member of the Harvard Computers, a team of women working to process astronomical data at the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge. The women’s goal was to map and define stars in the sky by making sense of the patterns observed and sorting them into categories. Many important figures in the astronomy community such as Edward Charles Pickering and Mary Anna Draper, the widow of wealthy physician and amateur astronomer Henry Draper, believed and supported her work. In 1901, Cannon published her first catalogue of stellar spectra after examining the bright southern hemisphere stars. In 1914, she got admitted as an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, a major association that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science and geophysics. In 1921, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from a European university. Throughout her life, Annie Jump Cannon has analyzed and researched hundreds of thousands of stars, focusing on the relationship between their spectral type, intensity and distribution. In her life span, she has discovered more than 300 variable stars; stars whose brightness and apparent magnitude as seen from Earth fluctuate. Annie Jump Cannon has left to the world a compiled biography of 100,000 references to variable stars containing five new stars and a double star. She died on April 13, 1941, at age 77, but her work has forever revolutionized the evolution of stellar classification and has helped astronomers of today study and classify the stars by their brightness or magnitude over time. Caroline Lucretia Herschel, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Annie Jump Cannon are only a few instances of women astronomers' power. In a world where men believe to rule the working space, astronomy has advanced in massive means, thanks to all the ladies who dedicated their lives to the field. There heritages give hope to the future generations of girls to keep investigating the sky. References: Biography of Caroline Herschel. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.assignmentpoint.com/arts/biography/biography-ofcaroline-herschel.html Hartmut Frommert, C. (n.d.). Caroline Lucretia Herschel (March 16, 1750 - January 9, 1848). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from http://www.messier.seds.org/xtra/Bios/cherschel.html What Is a Nebula? (2019, June 28). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nebula/en/ Henrietta Swan Leavitt. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henrietta-Swan-Leavitt Nova. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/novae Annie Jump Cannon. (2019, April 17). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.biography.com/scientist/annie-jump-cannon

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