The glass universe : how the ladies of the Harvard Observatory took the measure of the stars /
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as "human computers" to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studyin...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Viking,
[2016]
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| Summary: | In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as "human computers" to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography, enabled the women to discern what stars were made of, divide the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and find a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Sobel tells the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 324 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates (some color) : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780670016952 0670016950 |