|
Harvard Computers
The Harvard Computers was a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard 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. "The women were challenged to make sense of these patterns by devising a scheme for sorting the stars into categories. Annie Jump Cannon's success at this activity made her famous in her own lifetime, and she produced a stellar classification system that is still in use today. Antonia Maury discerned in the spectra a way to assess the relative sizes of stars, and Henrietta Leavitt showed how the cyclic changes of certain variable stars could serve as distance markers in space." Other computers in the team included Williamina Fleming and Florence Cushman. Although these women started primarily as calculators, they made significant contributions to astronomy, much of which they published in resea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Charles Pickering's Harem 13 May 1913
Edward is an English language, English given name. It is derived from the Old English, Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements ''wikt:ead#Old English, ēad'' "wealth, fortune; 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), Duarte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Dwarf Star
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes from the emission of residual thermal energy; no fusion takes place in a white dwarf. The nearest known white dwarf is at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name ''white dwarf'' was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star or black hole. This includes over 97% of the other stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen- fusing period of a main-sequence star of low or medium mass ends, such a star will expand to a red g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Draper Medal
The Henry Draper Medal is awarded every 4 years by the United States National Academy of Sciences "for investigations in astrophysics, astronomical physics". Named after Henry Draper, the medal is awarded with a gift of USD $15,000. The medal was established under the Draper Fund by his widow, Anna Draper, in honor of her husband, and was first awarded in 1886 to Samuel Pierpont Langley "for numerous investigations of a high order of merit in solar physics, and especially in the domain of radiant energy". It has since been awarded 45 times. The medal has been awarded to multiple individuals in the same year: in 1977 it was awarded to Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson "for their discovery of the Cosmic microwave background, cosmic microwave radiation (a remnant of the very early universe), and their leading role in the discovery of interstellar molecules"; in 1989 to Riccardo Giovanelli and Martha P. Haynes "for the first three-dimensional view of some of the remarkable l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
O B A F G K M
In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the rainbow of colors interspersed with spectral lines. Each line indicates a particular chemical element or molecule, with the line strength indicating the abundance of that element. The strengths of the different spectral lines vary mainly due to the temperature of the photosphere, although in some cases there are true abundance differences. The ''spectral class'' of a star is a short code primarily summarizing the ionization state, giving an objective measure of the photosphere's temperature. Most stars are currently classified under the Morgan–Keenan (MK) system using the letters ''O'', ''B'', ''A'', ''F'', ''G'', ''K'', and ''M'', a sequence from the hottest (''O'' type) to the coolest (''M'' type). Each letter class is then subdivided ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stellar Classification
In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their stellar spectrum, spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a Prism (optics), prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the Continuum (spectrum), rainbow of colors interspersed with spectral lines. Each line indicates a particular chemical element or molecule, with the line strength indicating the abundance of that element. The strengths of the different spectral lines vary mainly due to the temperature of the photosphere, although in some cases there are true abundance differences. The ''spectral class'' of a star is a short code primarily summarizing the ionization state, giving an objective measure of the photosphere's temperature. Most stars are currently classified under the Morgan–Keenan (MK) system using the letters ''O'', ''B'', ''A'', ''F'', ''G'', ''K'', and ''M'', a sequence from the hottest (''O'' type) to the coo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruce Medal
The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal is awarded every year by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to astronomy. It is named after Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American patroness of astronomy, and was first awarded in 1898. List of Bruce Medalists SourceAstronomical Society of the Pacific * 1898 – Simon Newcomb * 1899 – Arthur Auwers * 1900 – David Gill * 1902 – Giovanni V. Schiaparelli * 1904 – William Huggins * 1906 – Hermann Carl Vogel * 1908 – Edward C. Pickering * 1909 – George William Hill * 1911 – Henri Poincaré * 1913 – Jacobus C. Kapteyn * 1914 – Oskar Backlund * 1915 – William Wallace Campbell * 1916 – George Ellery Hale * 1917 – Edward Emerson Barnard * 1920 – Ernest W. Brown * 1921 – Henri A. Deslandres * 1922 – Frank W. Dyson * 1923 – Benjamin Baillaud * 1924 – Arthur Stanley Eddington * 1925 – Henry Norris Russell * 1926 – Robert G. Aitken * 1927 – Herbert Hall Turner * 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Curve
In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular frequency interval or band. Light curves can be periodic, as in the case of eclipsing binaries, Cepheid variables, other periodic variables, and transiting extrasolar planets, or aperiodic, like the light curve of a nova, a cataclysmic variable star, a supernova or a microlensing event or binary as observed during occultation events. The study of the light curve, together with other observations, can yield considerable information about the physical process that produces it or constrain the physical theories about it. Variable stars Graphs of the apparent magnitude of a variable star over time are commonly used to visualise and analyse their behaviour. Although the categorisation of variable star types is increasingly done from their s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variable Star
A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as either: * Intrinsic variables, whose luminosity actually changes; for example, because the star periodically swells and shrinks. * Extrinsic variables, whose apparent changes in brightness are due to changes in the amount of their light that can reach Earth; for example, because the star has an orbiting companion that sometimes eclipses it. Many, possibly most, stars have at least some variation in luminosity: the energy output of the Sun, for example, varies by about 0.1% over an 11-year solar cycle. Discovery An ancient Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days composed some 3,200 years ago may be the oldest preserved historical document of the discovery of a variable star, the eclipsing binary Algol. Of the modern astronomers, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarah Frances Whiting
Sarah Frances Whiting (August 23, 1847 – September 12, 1927) was an American physicist and astronomer. She was one of the founders and the first director of the Whitin Observatory at Wellesley College. She instructed several notable astronomers and physicists, including Annie Jump Cannon. Biography Whiting was interested from an early age in science by her father, who taught natural philosophy. Whiting graduated from Ingham University in 1865, after which she taught at a girls' secondary school in Brooklyn. Whiting was appointed by Wellesley College president Henry Fowle Durant, one year after the College's 1875 opening, as its first professor of physics. She established its physics department and the undergraduate experimental physics lab at Wellesley, the second of its kind to be started in the country. At the request of Durant, she attended lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology given by Edward Charles Pickering. Through attending Pickering's classes, Whit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wellesley College
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial grouping of elite current and former women's colleges in the northeastern United States. Wellesley's endowment of $3.226 billion is the largest out of all women's colleges and the 49th largest among all colleges and universities in the United States in 2019. Wellesley is frequently considered to be one of the best liberal arts colleges in the United States. The college is currently ranked #5 on the National Liberal Arts College list produced by ''U.S. News & World Report''. Wellesley is home to 56 departmental and interdepartmental majors spanning the liberal arts, as well as over 150 student clubs and organizations. Wellesley athletes compete in the NCAA Division III New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference. Its 500-acre (2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Winlock
Joseph Winlock (February 6, 1826 – June 11, 1875) was an American astronomer and mathematician. Biography He was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, the grandson of General Joseph Winlock (1758–1831). After graduating from Shelby College in Kentucky in 1845, he was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy at that institution. From 1852 until 1857 he worked as a computer for the ''American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac'', and relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He briefly served as head of the department of mathematics at the United States Naval Academy, but returned as superintendent of the Almanac office. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1853. He married Isabella Washington in Shelbyville, Kentucky on December 10, 1856, and they had six children. In 1863 he was one of the fifty charter members of the National Academy of Sciences. Three year later in 1866 he became director of the Harvard College Observatory, succeeding Georg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Winlock
Anna Winlock (1857–1904) was an American astronomer and human computer, one of the first members of female computer group known as "the Harvard Computers." She made the most complete catalog of stars near the north and south poles of her era. She is also remembered for her calculations and studies of asteroids. In particular, she did calculations on 433 Eros and 475 Ocllo. Early years Winlock was born September 15, 1857, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to astronomer Joseph Winlock and Isabella Lane. Winlock attended the Cambridge Schools as a child and began to develop an interest in both mathematics and the Greek language. Upon her graduation she received a letter from her principal expressing his appreciation for her Greek and of her character. Her father influenced her interest in astronomy. When she was twelve, she attended a solar eclipse expedition with her father in his home state of Kentucky. In June 1875, Joseph died shortly after Winlock had graduated from secondary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
