Leavitt

How big is the universe? In the early twentieth century, scientists took sides. One held that the entire universe was contained in the Milky Way galaxy; their champion was the strong-willed astronomer Harlow Shapley. Another camp believed that the...

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives...

Until the application of dry-plate photography to astronomy, very few women were involved in astronomical observations. Then, from the mid-1880s to the mid-1950s, women, especially at Harvard College Observatory, contributed more data on variable stars...

"A portrait of trailblazing astronomer Henrietta Leavitt and an illustrated exploration of the power of attention in scientific observation, artistic creation, and the making of meaning. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter of about 100,000 light...