Astronomy:
Women in Astronomy blog/reflection
Doctor, Dentist, Cop, Fire fighter; Most of the time people think of men doing these jobs rather than woman however, in most profession there are numerous amounts of woman just not recognized nearly enough. Astronomers are another profession most don’t see women doing but there are many historical and current female astronomers. Maria Mitchell, Debra Fischer and Mary Somerville just to name a few. They have all had some sort of impact on the astronomy society, which shows many they should have more recognition.
One of the first well-known astronomers is Caroline Herschel. Herschel grew up in Hanover, Germany. She had many diseases when she was a child. Her mother had hopes of Caroline getting married however with the diseases she had when she was younger her parents believed she wouldn’t marry so her mother made her a maid. Once Herschel was older she moved with her brother to England. Caroline was very fond of her brother so anything he was interested in she became interested. Herschel’s brother, William began studying astronomy although Caroline wasn’t very educated, she did the difficult calculations. William discovered Uranus with the help of his sister. William did end up moving away and Caroline started making her own discoveries. She was the first woman to discover a comet, which was then named “first lady’s comet”. She did discover some more comets. The Royal Society published her star catalogs. She was also presented with awards and gold medals such as, the gold medal of the Astronomical society; The Royal Irish Academy awards her with an honorary membership along with some others.
Another lady I will be talking about is Annie Jump Cannon. She came from a prestigious family, her father a senator and ship builder in Delaware and Annie’s mother was an Astronomy teacher. Cannon went off to college for a while then returned to Delaware after her mother passed away. She was eager to get back to astronomy but once she did she soon became a member of the “Pickering’s women”(women hired by Harvard college observatory director, Edward Pickering to reduce data and carry out astronomical calculations -http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/cannon.html). She worked with some other well-known women astronomers on Pickering’s projects such as, Antonia Maury and Williamina Fleming. Cannon came up with O B A F G K M in order to classify about 400,000 stars. She also discovered 300 variable stars. Annie Jump Cannon was a very successful astronomer who received a lot of honors as well as awards. Some of the honors and awards were having an annual award from the American Astronomical Society named after her, she received the first honorary doctorate oxford university had ever given awarded to a woman as well as the Henry Draper medal from the National Academy of Sciences awarded to her.
Today, we still have some phenomenal women astronomers. Jill Tarter started her career off searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Tarter was a project scientist with NASA at one point. Currently she is still working with radio astronomy and extraterrestrial intelligence. She is the chair for a non-profit organization by the name of SETI Institute. SETI’s mission is “to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe”. She is also in the process of putting together an evolution-based program for high school science classes. A woman with some spectacular credentials is Carolyn Shoemaker. As she got older and married her husband, astronomy was a part of everyday life. Shoemaker worked towards planetary astronomy as a career. Side by side with her husband they made numerous discoveries as well as on their own. One of the bigger comets they discovered together was Comet Shoemaker. On her own she has discovered 800 asteroids and 32 comets; she holds the record for most comet discoveries
It’s great to see such incredible discoveries made by amazingly intelligent women. These women put in so much work into what they’ve did for astronomy history. Seeing these women make the accomplishments they did in these time periods where females didn’t have a lot of education, if any. These days’ women are in all sorts of different occupations. Being a woman myself, it’s very refreshing to remember I can do anything I set my mind to just like these women did. It’s always nice to learn about smart, strong women.
“Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned – not to see what is not”
- Maria Mitchell
Reflection: This semester I've had my focus mainly on a couple certain classes which I know astronomy was not one of them. I should have separated my time equally like I usually do. Science has never been one of my favorite subjects so I believe that was also one of the reasons why. However, I do realize I should have made more of effort and will be sure not to make this mistake again.
One of the first well-known astronomers is Caroline Herschel. Herschel grew up in Hanover, Germany. She had many diseases when she was a child. Her mother had hopes of Caroline getting married however with the diseases she had when she was younger her parents believed she wouldn’t marry so her mother made her a maid. Once Herschel was older she moved with her brother to England. Caroline was very fond of her brother so anything he was interested in she became interested. Herschel’s brother, William began studying astronomy although Caroline wasn’t very educated, she did the difficult calculations. William discovered Uranus with the help of his sister. William did end up moving away and Caroline started making her own discoveries. She was the first woman to discover a comet, which was then named “first lady’s comet”. She did discover some more comets. The Royal Society published her star catalogs. She was also presented with awards and gold medals such as, the gold medal of the Astronomical society; The Royal Irish Academy awards her with an honorary membership along with some others.
Another lady I will be talking about is Annie Jump Cannon. She came from a prestigious family, her father a senator and ship builder in Delaware and Annie’s mother was an Astronomy teacher. Cannon went off to college for a while then returned to Delaware after her mother passed away. She was eager to get back to astronomy but once she did she soon became a member of the “Pickering’s women”(women hired by Harvard college observatory director, Edward Pickering to reduce data and carry out astronomical calculations -http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/cannon.html). She worked with some other well-known women astronomers on Pickering’s projects such as, Antonia Maury and Williamina Fleming. Cannon came up with O B A F G K M in order to classify about 400,000 stars. She also discovered 300 variable stars. Annie Jump Cannon was a very successful astronomer who received a lot of honors as well as awards. Some of the honors and awards were having an annual award from the American Astronomical Society named after her, she received the first honorary doctorate oxford university had ever given awarded to a woman as well as the Henry Draper medal from the National Academy of Sciences awarded to her.
Today, we still have some phenomenal women astronomers. Jill Tarter started her career off searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Tarter was a project scientist with NASA at one point. Currently she is still working with radio astronomy and extraterrestrial intelligence. She is the chair for a non-profit organization by the name of SETI Institute. SETI’s mission is “to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe”. She is also in the process of putting together an evolution-based program for high school science classes. A woman with some spectacular credentials is Carolyn Shoemaker. As she got older and married her husband, astronomy was a part of everyday life. Shoemaker worked towards planetary astronomy as a career. Side by side with her husband they made numerous discoveries as well as on their own. One of the bigger comets they discovered together was Comet Shoemaker. On her own she has discovered 800 asteroids and 32 comets; she holds the record for most comet discoveries
It’s great to see such incredible discoveries made by amazingly intelligent women. These women put in so much work into what they’ve did for astronomy history. Seeing these women make the accomplishments they did in these time periods where females didn’t have a lot of education, if any. These days’ women are in all sorts of different occupations. Being a woman myself, it’s very refreshing to remember I can do anything I set my mind to just like these women did. It’s always nice to learn about smart, strong women.
“Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned – not to see what is not”
- Maria Mitchell
Reflection: This semester I've had my focus mainly on a couple certain classes which I know astronomy was not one of them. I should have separated my time equally like I usually do. Science has never been one of my favorite subjects so I believe that was also one of the reasons why. However, I do realize I should have made more of effort and will be sure not to make this mistake again.