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Maria Mitchell Observatory
The Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA, was founded in 1908 and named in honor of Maria Mitchell, the first American woman astronomer. It is a major component of the Maria Mitchell Association. The Observatory actually consists of two observatories - the main Maria Mitchell Observatory near downtown Nantucket and the Loines Observatory about a kilometer west of town. It is also the repository for a valuable collection of over 8000 wide-field (13° x 16°) glass photographic plates, recording observations of large swaths of sky from 1913 to 1995. The observatory has extensive public education and research programs. For more than 50 years, the observatory has offered summer research internships in astronomy and astrophysics for undergraduate students, funded by the National Science Foundation. The importance of this work was recognized with a 2009 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, given by President Barack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alvan Clark
Alvan Clark (March 8, 1804 – August 19, 1887), born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the descendant of a Cape Cod whaling family of English ancestry, was an American astronomer and telescope maker. Biography He started as a portrait painter and engraver (c.1830s-1850s), and at the age of 40 became involved in telescope making. Using glass blanks made by Chance Brothers of Birmingham and Feil-Mantois of Paris, his firm '' Alvan Clark & Sons'' ground lenses for refracting telescopes. Their lenses included the largest in the world at the time: the at Dearborn Observatory at the Old University of Chicago (the lens was originally intended for Ole Miss), the two telescopes at the United States Naval Observatory and McCormick Observatory, the at Pulkovo Observatory (destroyed in the Siege of Leningrad; only the lens survives), the telescope at Lick Observatory (still third-largest) and later the at Yerkes Observatory, which remains the largest successful refracting telescope in the wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomical Observatories In Massachusetts
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas. In the past, astronomy included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy, and the making of calendars. Nowadays, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Astronomical Observatories
This is a list of astronomical observatories ordered by name, along with initial dates of operation (where an accurate date is available) and location. The list also includes a final year of operation for many observatories that are no longer in operation. While other sciences, such as volcanology and meteorology, also use facilities called observatories for research and observations, this list is limited to observatories that are used to observe celestial objects. Astronomical observatories are mainly divided into four categories: space-based, airborne, ground-based, and underground-based. Many modern telescopes and observatories are located in space to observe astronomical objects in wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that cannot penetrate the Earth's atmosphere (such as ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays) and are thus impossible to observe using ground-based telescopes. Being above the atmosphere, these space observatories can also avoid the effects of atmo ... [...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, focused 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, and makes them available to professional astronomers, researchers, and educators. Since professional astronomers do not have the time or the resources to monitor every variable star, astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can make genuine contributions to scientific research. During 2011, the 100th year of the AAVSO's existence, the 20-millionth variable star observation was received into the database. The AAVSO International Database (AID) stores over 35 million observations as of 2019. The organization receives nearly 1,000,000 observations annually from around 2,000 professional and amateur observers and is quot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eileen Friel
Eileen Dolores Friel is an American astronomer specializing in the metallicity of star clusters. She is a former director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory and Lowell Observatory, and a professor emeritus of astronomy at Indiana University. Education and career Friel was a physics major at the College of William & Mary. After going to the University of Cambridge for Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, she returned to the US for doctoral study in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her dissertation, ''A study of the stellar populations in two high galactic latitude fields with comparison to galaxy models'', was completed in 1986 under the supervision of Robert Kraft. After postdoctoral research positions at the Paris Observatory, NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, and University of Hawaii, she served as director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory for five years. She moved to the National Science Foundation as a program dire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emilia Pisani Belserene
Emilia Pauline Pisani (Lee) Belserene (December 12, 1922 – December 11, 2012) was an American astronomer specializing in the observation of variable stars and recognized as an expert on RR Lyrae variable stars. She became known for her work as the director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket and for her biographical writings on Maria Mitchell. Education and career Belserene was a student at New Rochelle High School, and was awarded a full scholarship to Smith College. She became the only astronomy student there, with astronomer Clinton B. Ford as a faculty mentor. She graduated summa cum laude in 1943, and went to Columbia University for part-time graduate study while at the same time raising a family and teaching part-time at Hunter College. She completed her Ph.D. in 1953. Her dissertation, ''Period changes of variable stars in Messier 3'', was supervised by Martin Schwarzschild. It involved observations using the 36-inch refracting telescope at the Lick Observator ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorrit Hoffleit
Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit (March 12, 1907 – April 9, 2007) was an American senior research astronomer at Yale University. She is best known for her work in variable stars, astrometry, spectroscopy, meteors, and the Bright Star Catalog. She is also known for her mentorship of many young women and generations of astronomers. Life Hoffleit's interest in astronomy began with the 1919 Perseid meteor shower that she saw with her mother. In 1928, she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in mathematics. She then went on to work for the Harvard College Observatory, searching for variable stars. In 1938, she was awarded a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College and was subsequently hired, in 1948, as an astronomer at Harvard University. She remained at Harvard until 1956 when she moved to Yale University. She remained at Yale until retirement in 1975. At Yale she followed in the footsteps of Ida Barney, taking over her astrometric work, and of whom she later wrote "To know erwas a pleasu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Harwood
Margaret Harwood (March 19, 1885 February 6, 1979) was an American astronomer specializing in photometry and the first director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket, Massachusetts. An asteroid discovered in 1960 was named 7040 Harwood in her honor. Early life and education Margaret Harwood was born in 1885 in Littleton, Massachusetts, one of nine children of Herbert Joseph Harwood and Emelie Augusta Green. In 1907 she received her AB from Radcliffe College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1916, she earned her AM from the University of California. Career After graduating college, she worked at the Harvard Observatory and taught in private schools in the Boston area. In 1912, an astronomical fellowship was created for women to work at Maria Mitchell Observatory; Harwood was the first recipient of the fellowship, receiving $1,000. In 1916, at 30 years old, Harwood was named director of Mitchell Observatory, and worked there until her retirement in 1957. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Damped Lyman-alpha System
Damped Lyman alpha systems or Damped Lyman alpha absorption systems is a term used by astronomers for concentrations of neutral hydrogen gas that are detected in the spectra of quasars – a class of distant Active Galactic Nuclei. They are defined to be systems where the column density (density projected along the line of sight to the quasar) of hydrogen is larger than 2 x 1020 atoms/cm2. The observed spectra consist of neutral hydrogen Lyman alpha absorption lines which are broadened by radiation damping. These systems can be observed in quantity at relatively high redshifts of 2–4, when they contained most of the neutral hydrogen in the universe. They are believed to be associated with the early stages of galaxy formation, as the high neutral hydrogen column densities of DLAs are also typical of sightlines in the Milky Way, and other nearby galaxies. Since they are observed in absorption rather than emissions by their stars, they offer the opportunity to study the dynamics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telescopes
A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe distant objects, the word ''telescope'' now refers to a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors. The first known practical telescopes were refracting telescopes with glass lenses and were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century. They were used for both terrestrial applications and astronomy. The reflecting telescope, which uses mirrors to collect and focus light, was invented within a few decades of the first refracting telescope. In the 20th century, many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s and infrared telescopes in the 1960s. Etymology The word ''telescope'' was coine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nantucket, Massachusetts
Nantucket () is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government that is part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is the only such consolidated town-county in Massachusetts. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,255, making it the least populated county in Massachusetts. Part of the town is designated the Nantucket CDP, or census-designated place. The region of Surfside on Nantucket is the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts. The name "Nantucket" is adapted from similar Algonquian names for the island, but is very similar to the endonym of the native Nehantucket tribe that occupied the region at the time of European settlement. Nantucket is a tourist destination and summer colony. Due to tourists and seasonal residents, the population of the island increases to at least 50,000 during the summer months. The average sale price ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
