{"id":14525,"date":"2014-05-05T22:03:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14525"},"modified":"2014-05-05T22:03:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:03:14","slug":"how-three-remarkable-women-of-whom-you-have-never-heard-produced-our-modern-classification-of-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14525","title":{"rendered":"How three remarkable women of whom you have never heard produced our modern classification of the stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_Charles_Pickering\">Edward Charles Pickering<\/a>\u00a0(1846-1919) was an American astrophysicist who worked to capture the spectra of multiple stars simultaneously, supported by the so-called Harvard Computers or &#8220;Pickering&#8217;s Harem&#8221;, a team of women researchers under Pickering&#8217;s mentorship, to catalog the spectra.<\/p>\n<p>This team included <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Annie_Jump_Cannon\">Annie Jump Cannon<\/a>\u00a0(1863-1941), who developed <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stellar_classification\">the stellar classification system<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt\">Henrietta Swan Leavitt<\/a>\u00a0(1868-1921), who discovered the means to measure the distance from a star to the earth by its spectra, later used to identify other galaxies in the universe.<\/p>\n<p>Later, this team included <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin\">Cecilia Payne<\/a>\u00a0(1900-1979), who developed a good friendship with Cannon; Payne&#8217;s thesis based on her work with Cannon was able to determine the composition and temperature of the stars, collaborating with Cannon&#8217;s classification system.<\/p>\n<p>The work of these three remarkable women was highlighted in the most recent episode (number 8) in the brilliant television series <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cosmos:_A_Spacetime_Odyssey\">&#8220;Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edward Charles Pickering\u00a0(1846-1919) was an American astrophysicist who worked to capture the spectra of multiple stars simultaneously, supported by the so-called Harvard Computers or &#8220;Pickering&#8217;s Harem&#8221;, a team of women researchers under Pickering&#8217;s mentorship, to catalog the spectra. This team included Annie Jump Cannon\u00a0(1863-1941), who developed the stellar classification system, and Henrietta Swan Leavitt\u00a0(1868-1921), who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14525"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14537,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions\/14537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}