Podcasts about harvard college observatory

Settle in and drift into sleep as we explore the fascinating life of Cecilia Payne, the groundbreaking astronomer who revolutionized our understanding of the universe. In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, we'll journey through Payne's early struggles, her scientific breakthroughs, and her lasting impact on astronomy. If you've ever wondered what stars are truly made of, Payne had the answer—though it took a while for the world to catch up. Dim the lights, close your eyes, and let the soothing sound of Wikipedia lull you into slumber. Don't forget to visit icantsleeppodcast.com for more episodes and ad-free listening. Show Notes:  00:00 - Welcome and episode introduction 00:35 - Introduction to Cecilia Payne 02:17 - Early life 02:56 - Education 09:40 - Career 13:50 - Legacy 15:44 - Personal life 18:05 - Honors and awards 20:18 - Astronomer intro 21:08 - Types 22:40 - Academic 26:34 - Amateur astronomers 27:38 - Harvard college observatory intro 28:46 - History 30:43 - Publications Want More? Request a topic: icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Listen ad-free & support the show: icantsleep.supportingcast.fm Shop sleep-friendly products: icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Wikipedia Attribution: This content is derived from the Wikipedia articles on Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Astronomer, and Harvard College Observatory, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full articles: Wikipedia - Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Wikipedia - Astronomer Wikipedia - Harvard College Observatory Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna Von Mertens' thoughtful new exploration of Henrietta Swan Leavitt's life describes and illuminates Leavitt's decades-long study of stars, including the groundbreaking system she developed for measuring vast distances within our universe simply by looking at photographic plates. Leavitt studied hundreds of thousands of stars captured on the glass plates at the Harvard College Observatory, where she worked as a human computer from the turn of the 20th century until her death in 1921. Von Mertens explores her life, the women she worked alongside, and her discoveries, weaving biography, science, and visual imagery into a rich tapestry that deepens our understanding of the universe and the power of focused, methodical attention.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was in her early 20s when she figured out what the stars are made of. Both she and her groundbreaking findings were ahead of their time. Continuing the legacy of women working at the Harvard College Observatory, Cecilia charted the way for a generation of female astronomers to come. This Best Of episode of Lost Women of Science follows Cecilia's journey of discovery, journals her drive and determination against all odds, and takes you to the Harvard College Observatory itself to walk in Cecilia's footsteps.

If you have some spare time on your hands, you might want to spend it helping out astronomers. You can sift through pictures and other data to help scientists find what they're looking for. Projects include classifying stars and galaxies, searching for planets in other star systems, and many others. At least one project is preserving part of astronomical history. Project Phaedra is going through 2500 notebooks recorded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The notebooks were kept by women working at Harvard College Observatory. Known as “computers,” the women pored over images taken by male astronomers, and made the tedious calculations needed to analyze the observations. Some of the women became astronomers in their own right, and made some of the most important contributions of the era. Annie Jump Cannon developed a new way to classify stars, and it's still in use today. Henrietta Swan Leavitt devised a way to measure the distances to other galaxies. And Cecilia Payne was the first to propose that stars are made mainly of hydrogen and helium.     Project Phaedra volunteers transcribe their notebooks. The logs include the women's calculations, notes about the glass plates they were examining, tables of data, and more. The project has been going on for several years, so many of the notebooks have been finished. But others remain — preserving an important era in the history of astronomy.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

In the late 19th century, astronomy was a growing field. At the time, Edward Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, was working to create a classification system for stars by capturing the light from these distant celestial objects onto photographic glass plates. A team of women assistants and astronomers meticulously maintained and analyzed these delicate negatives. In her new book, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, Dava Sobel shares the stories of these “human computers” and how their work helped to advance the field of astronomy and the role of women in science.This team of astronomers included Williamina Fleming, who was once Pickering's maid but eventually became a supervisor to the group and went on to identify hundreds of variable stars. And Henrietta Swan Leavitt's observations about the luminosity of stars would shape later ideas about the expanding universe.To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. The transcript for this segment is available on sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

See the Video! https://youtube.com/live/BFuW-zfH5RU Avi Loeb joined Brian Keating after he led a Galileo Project expedition to the Pacific Ocean to retrieve spherules of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1. These samples were brought back to Harvard College Observatory over 50 spherules in total, which lay on the deep ocean floor for nearly a decade. These sub-millimeter-sized spheres, which appear under a microscope as beautiful metallic marbles, were concentrated along the expected path of IM1 — about 85 kilometers off the coast of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Their discovery opens a new frontier in astronomy, where what lay outside the solar system is studied through a microscope rather than a telescope. That 83% of the matter in the universe is apparently composed of dark matter which was not found yet in the solar system should teach us modesty in forecasting the nature of interstellar objects. Win a meteorite https://BrianKeating.com/list Have a .edu email address? You can win a meteorite guaranteed https://BrianKeating.com/edu Aliens, UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJGKdZD30K_8pkx_wLg5vQmkAvGTUNaNm Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple's best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts  Please leave a rating and review: On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB On Spotify it's here: https://spoti.fi/3vpfXok On Audible it's here https://tinyurl.com/wtpvej9v  Find other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating  or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Henrietta Leavitt war am Harvard College Observatory lediglich „Computer". Frauen durften vor rund 100 Jahren nur die Beobachtungsdaten männlicher Kollegen auswerten. Dabei gelang ihr eine der bis heute wichtigsten Entdeckungen der Astrophysik.Lorenzen, Dirkwww.deutschlandfunk.de, SternzeitDirekter Link zur Audiodatei

Today on Merged Podcast we get an inside look into the Galileo project, which is currently studying UAP (UFO), through the eyes of research fellow Abby White. Abby explains how she got into the Galileo Project, her experience working on it, and the tools used to study UAP. She shares her perspective on breaking stigma around the subject, and why validated scientific research matters. She also reveals what it has been like to explain what she does for work to others, and what her peers think about the subject.   ===   TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Intro 1:00 Abby's Educational Background 12:35 Working on the Galileo Project 20:03 Break Stigma & Paradigm Shifts 28:29 Tools for Studying UAP 39:21 Implications of Speaking out 46:18 Continuation of Study 47:59 Advice for Young People Getting Involved 50:54 Galileo Project Today 58:55 Conclusion   ===   Abby White is a recent graduate of Wellesley College, and recent a Research Fellow in the Theoretical Astrophysics Division at the Harvard College Observatory. She is also a Pre Doctoral Fellow Copernicus Space Corporation, and is pursuing a PhD in astrophysics.   ===   Ryan Graves:  AIAA UAP: https://www.aiaauap.org Twitter: @uncertainvector   Connect with Us:    Website: http://www.mergedpodcast.com Merged Point: https://www.mergedpoint.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When most people look at the glass plates preserved at Harvard College Observatory, they see black dots, smears, and smudges. Astronomers see a chance to learn how the stars, galaxies, and clouds those markings represent have changed over the past century or longer. And artists see the beauty of the universe and the hard work of the women who analyzed the plates. The original plates are negatives — they show the stars in black and the background sky in white. At Harvard, women “computers” marked and labeled the astronomical objects in the images. They also measured the brightness of those objects and made many other notations. The plates have been scanned to make it easier for astronomers to find them. As part of that process, the hand-made notations were erased, although all of the plates were photographed first, and some of the originals have been preserved. To commemorate the work of the women computers, artist Erika Blumenfeld created “Tracing Luminaries.” It's a set of six prints. She erased the stars, leaving only the written notations, which were hand-layered with 24-karat gold. Lia Halloran interpreted the plates themselves in “Your Body is a Space that Sees.” It's a series of prints depicting comets, galaxies, and other objects. The titles include the names of the women computers, including Henrietta Leavitt and Annie Jump Cannon — two of the most important astronomers of the 20th century.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

If you poke around any observatory that's been around a while, you're likely to find a room filled with treasure: pictures of the sky shot on glass plates. Many of the plates are old and brittle. Some have been damaged by water or other hazards. But almost all of them still have scientific value. And astronomers are trying to preserve them in both physical and digital form. The first glass-plate images were shot in the mid-1800s. Over the next century or so, they were the main way to record the universe. Some are just a few inches per side, while many others are close to a foot across. Today, astronomers use those plates to study how the universe has changed. They can watch the expansion of clouds of gas and dust ejected from dying stars, for example. They can extend their plots of the motions of binary stars, asteroids, and many other objects, providing better calculations of their orbits. And they can see how stars have changed brightness, helping understand what caused the changes in the first place. Saving the plates isn't easy. They have to be carefully calibrated, and researchers have to find out how and when the plates were shot. Even so, astronomers are making progress. Harvard College Observatory has digitized about half a million plates. Another group has gathered more than 400,000 from several small observatories. And this year, a group in Europe finished processing almost a hundred thousand — keeping these astronomical treasures alive.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

In this episode, Artistic Director Jerome Davis talks to Dana Bouquin about the impact of Henrietta Leavitt in real life. Join us for SILENT SKY to experience Henrietta's journey. Time Stamps: Intro, 0:00 Dana's work 1:13 Librarian or Astrophysicist? 3:10 Dana's Background 4:10 What is astrophysics? 6:43 Women's history in STEM 9:37 Henrietta Levitt and her impact on Astrophysics 10:40  Henrietta's Role at Harvard College Observatory 14:45 Glass Plate Photography 16:27 The relationship between Arts and Sciences 19:!7 What's next in Astrophysics? 22:19 Why is Astronomy important? 24:15 Wrap up  25:50

Just about every telescope is an amazing scientific instrument — an “eye” on the universe. But some are much more: They're works of art. An example is the Great Refractor, at Harvard College Observatory. It took its first peek at the heavens 175 years ago today. Astronomy was still a young American science then. But a brilliant comet had spurred interest in the field. Harvard took advantage to build a new telescope. It raised almost $26,000 from 94 donors, including former president John Quincy Adams. The telescope's heart was a 15-inch primary lens — the largest in the United States for 20 years. It was housed in a 20-foot tube with a veneer of polished mahogany. Some of the fittings were made of brass. The combination made the telescope look like a sculpture as much as a scientific tool. The telescope first looked at the sky on the afternoon of June 24th, 1847 — a view of the gibbous Moon. At first, astronomers actually looked at the sky through the telescope. Later, they used it to take pictures. In fact, it took the first daguerreotype of a star — Vega, one of the bright highlights of the summer sky. The Great Refractor remained a busy scientific instrument until the early 1930s. After that, it was used for education and public outreach. It was finally retired in the 1970s. But it's still there, and still occasionally peeks at the night sky — a beautiful instrument for observing the stars.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org Today's 2 topics: - What would happen if we accidentally exported an organism that would flourish on Mars or brought back a Martian virus? - From about 1885 to 1992 more than 500,000 photographic glass plates were taken with telescopes at various locations and sent to the Harvard College Observatory.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Avi Loeb is author of the book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth”.  It's a story you can hardly believe, once you hear it.  But here it is -- the story of the day in 2017 when telescopes around the world started tracking an object in our solar system.  It was moving in such a way that scientists around the world came to the same, startling conclusion:  It was an extraterrestrial spaceship.  Avi Loeb is a professor of the Harvard Astronomy Department.  He is also a member of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (which is a collaboration of Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.  Professor Loeb received a PhD in plasma physics at age 24 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1986) and was subsequently a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1988-1993), where he started to work in theoretical astrophysics. In 1993 he moved to Harvard University where he was tenured three years later.  He is now the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science and former chair of the department. He also holds a visiting professorship at the Weizmann Institute of Science and a Sackler Senior Professorship by special appointment in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University. Loeb has authored nearly 700 research articles and 4 books. Avi Loeb:  https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb Something Ventured:  https://somethingventured.us/

Hello Interactors,Today we’re branching into topography and the role western colonial expansion plays in the creation and articulation of our naturally occurring geography. Most of us are not very skilled at critiquing the role maps have played in shaping how we see the globe and the people on it. But I’m optimistic that when we do we can better confront the boundaries that maps have created between people and place.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…NAME THAT PLACEI spent last April talking about how the United States was surveyed and diced in little squares that are featured in our maps today. It was a technique ripped out of ancient Rome as a way to rationally quantify space across massive swaths of land. The United States perfected gridded cartesian cadastral cartography, but drawing little lines on paper as a means of assessing, assuming, and asserting control over land had been done for centuries by European colonial settlers around the world – beginning in the Renaissance. The Renaissance accelerated mapping. This was an era of discovering new knowledge, instrumentation, and the measuring and quantification of the natural world. Mercator’s projection stemmed from the invention of perspective; a word derived from the Latin word perspicere – “to see through.” European colonial maps were drawn mostly to navigate, control, and dominate land – and its human occupants. We have all been controlled by these maps in one way or other and we still are. Our knowledge of the world largely stems from the same perspective Mercator was offering up centuries ago. The entire world sees the world through the eyes of Western explorers, conquerors, and cartographers. That includes elements of maps as simple as place names. Take place names in Africa, as an example. The country occupied by France until 1960, Niger, comes from the Latin word for “shining black”. Its derogatory adaptation by the British added another ‘g’ making a word we now call the n-word. But niger was not the most popular Latin word used to describe people of Africa, it was an ancient Greek derivative; Aethiops – which means “burn face”. If you replace the ‘s’ at the end with the ‘a’ from the beginning, you see where the name Ethiopia comes from. Even the name of my home state of Iowa has dubious origins. Sure it’s named after the Indigenous tribe, the Iowa or Ioway, but the Iowa people did not call themselves that. They referred to themselves in their own language as the Báxoje (Bah-Kho-Je). They settled primarily in the eastern and south eastern part of the land we now call Iowa. Most of them were forced to relocate to reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma. It’s believed the name Iowa, came from a Sioux word – ayuhwa which means “sleepy ones.” It would be like the south winning the Civil War and then turning around and declaring the region to their north henceforth be referred to as: Yankees. Even the word Sioux is a French cheapening of a word from the Ojbiwe people– Nadouessioux (na·towe·ssiw). The Sioux were actually a nation combined of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people. They referred to themselves as Oceti Sakowin (oh-CHEH-tee SHAW-kow-we) or “Seven Council Fires”. They covered the sweeping plains of most of what we now call Minnesota; which stems from the Dakota phrase Mni Sota Makoce – “where the waters reflect the sky”. They extended south to the northwest corner of so-called Iowa and east to the more aptly named state of South Dakota. These people were expelled from Minnesota after the Dakota War of 1862. They continue to suffer today the pains felt by America’s largest mass execution in history at the hands of none other than Abraham Lincoln. Just months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln ordered 38 Dakota and Lakota men to be hung. Dissatisfied with the pace and politics of the makeshift trial of 303 Indigenous people, he decided on his own who should live and who should die. On April 23rd, 1863 the United States declared their treaties with the Lakota and Dakota null and void, closed their reservations, and marched them off their land. It took until this year, 2021, for the United States to give a southern sliver of land back to them. And in Northern Minnesota they’re still fighting to protect the water that reflects the sky.MAPS AND MATH FROM A MAN FROM BATH There’s another Westernized place name just west of where the Dakota and Lakota people thrived called Gannett Peak. It’s the tallest mountain in the state of Wyoming and is part of the Bridger-Teton range. I’m sure you’ve heard of the more popular neighboring range, the Grand Teton’s; another notable (and sexist) French place name which means – ‘Big Boobs’. Gannett Peak is named after Henry Gannett – the father of American mapmaking. Born in Bath, Maine in 1846 he went on to graduate from Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in 1869. After some time in the field documenting geology from the Great Lakes to the mines of Colorado he returned to Harvard for a degree in mining engineering. He spent a couple years working at the Harvard College Observatory making maps and calculating the building’s precise longitude. He then was hired as the chief astronomer-topographer-geographer by the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories in 1872. A mouthful. Perhaps daunted by such a long name for a department charged with precision and clarity of information, the USGGST was shortened to USGS in 1779 – the U.S. Geological Society. Some claim Gannett lobbied for USGGS in an attempt to maintain the word geographical and not just geological. If so, he was likely outvoted by his boss and prominent geologist, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. His book, The Great West: its Attractions and Resources gives you a clue as to why geologists were maybe more revered than geographers in the late seventeen and eighteen hundreds. After all, there’s gold in them there hills.The study of naturally occurring geometric properties and their spatial relations over a continuous plane is the work of topology. Documenting and surveying those studies is the work of a topographer. And the artifact they generate is called a topographic map. The first large scale topographic mapping project was Cassini’s Geometric Map of France in 1792. Then, in 1802 the British followed with the highly precise topographic map of India. As I’ve noted in previous posts, the earliest surveying and mapping of the British colonies and the United States were funded and controlled by government backed private companies like the Hudson Bay Company in the 1600s and the Ohio Company of Associates in the 1700s. IT’S UP TO YOU TO QUESTION YOUR VIEWThe topographic map of India was also directed by a British colonizing super-spreader the East India Company. They, together with the British government, had been at it for 200 years already. But in the early 1800s they were seeking accuracy. They wanted far more precise control over the Indigenous land, resources, trade, and people. The people of India are second to Africa in genetic diversity and emerged via Africa through the Indus River valley; hence the name India. This massive southeast Asian continent was first named by the Spanish or Portuguese – India is Latin for “Region of the Indus River”. The map that the East India Company commissioned in 1802 is called the Great Trigonometrical Survey. Trigonometry had already been awhile. In 140BC its Greek inventor, Hipparchus, used it, as the British did, for spherical trigonometry – the relationship of spherical triangles that emerge when three circles wrapping around a sphere intersect to form a spherical triangle. It’s used to measure the spherical curvature of the earth and was employed with precision by the East India Company using instruments with cool names like theodolite and Zenith sector. What resulted was a map of India featuring a fine-grained triangulated lattice accurately depicting the designated borders of British claimed territories. It was also the first accurate height measurements of Mount Everest, K2, and Kanchenjunga. Those heights were surveyed by Indigenous Tibetan surveyors who were secretly hired and trained by the British. Europeans were not allowed into Tibet at the time, so the surveyors had to pretend they were just hiking. This trigonometrical triangulated technique was the first accurate measure of a section of the longitudinal arc. The same arced sections that defined the curved edges of Henry Gannett’s topographic quadrangle mapping system which he perfected seventy years later on the other side of the globe at an arc distance of roughly 8,448 miles or 13,595 kilometers.Gannett’s career arc makes it easy to see why he figures prominently in American geography. Following is just a sampling of his contributions.He was the first geographer assigned to the census for the country’s tenth census survey. Gannett was responsible for drawing the first census tracts and invented the enumeration of districts based on population and geography. He chaired the Board of Geographic Names and later wrote a book on the history of United States place names. You can read a digitized version online. It includes a surprisingly long list of place names across the country and their origins. He demarcated the first 110,000 miles of national forests and served as Teddy Roosevelt’s research program director for his National Conservation Commission which projected future natural resource use.He helped form the National Geographic Society, Association of American Geographers, and other astronomy and geology clubs.He published two hundred articles on human geography, cartography, and geomorphology all while editing a handful of journals and publishing textbooks.The topographical techniques and programs Gannett pioneered were used all the way to the 1980’s and 90’s as GPS and computers took over. As amazing as his work was, it was no match for satellite imagery, GPS, and computer imaging. The topography he painstakingly surveyed and mapped is now available to anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection.Gannett was one of many geographers throughout the history of western colonization. Sure he was more influential than most, but they were all tasked with the same thing. Whether it was triangulating British territories in India, finessing French regions in Africa, or delineating Dutch districts in Brazil they were all measuring, mapping, and manipulating how others should see the world. It’s the paradox of mapmaking. No matter your intent, whatever line you draw will reflect the bias you bring. Mercator was biased by perspective because that’s what the culture of his time led him to do. Gannett mapped natural occurring features of the land because the mapping of minerals and other natural resources was in high demand. Iowa was named Iowa because that’s what they knew. Even attempts to counter-map the dominance of cartesian colonial cartography can’t escape its own bias. Nobody can. But we live on a melting planet, so our days remain a few. If we’re going to survive this calamity, we must see that our thoughts are skewed. So the next you look at a map, consider its point of view. If we all do this together, we can invent a world anew. Sources: Henry Gannett Chapter. The History of Cartography, Volume 6: Cartography in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Mark Monmonier.Wikipedia. Subscribe at interplace.io

Wir springen in dieser Folge nach Harvard in die USA an die Sternwarte, das Harvard College Observatory. Der langjährige Direktor dort, Edward Pickering, setzte auf eine neue Technik, mit der in der Astronomie eine neue Ära eingeläutet wurde: die Fotografie. Die Auswertung der vielen Fotoplatten übernahm eine Gruppe Frauen, die heute als Harvard Computers bekannt ist. Diese Pionierinnen haben wegweisende Arbeiten gemacht und die Astrophysik auf ein neues Level gehoben, in einer Zeit, in der Frauen die wissenschaftliche Anerkennung verwehrt wurde. Vielen Dank an Karl Urban, der uns nicht nur auf das Thema hingewiesen hat, sondern in dieser Folge als Experte zur Verfügung stand und uns die damals entdeckten astronomischen Erkenntnisse genauer erklärt hat. Karl macht neben seinen journalistischen Arbeiten auch seit vielen Jahren einen Podcast über Sterne und Steine: AstroGeo.

You can find lots of advice about how to avoid feeling bored during this pandemic. There are virtual dance parties and home safaries, lists of what to read and watch, and yoga classes on Zoom. Boredom is a difficult emotion for most of us. Almost 3,500 people living under quarantine in Italy shared on a survey last week that boredom has been one of the hardest parts of staying inside. We go out of our way to avoid feeling it, like the students who chose electric shock over feeling bored. Why can't we allow ourselves to be bored? Too much boredom can lead to depression and risky behavior. But it can also deepen awareness and inspire creativity. And one person's boredom is another person's pleasure. Henrietta Swan-Leavitt was an astronomer at Harvard College Observatory who spent 20 years beginning in 1895 scanning photographic plates to catalogue the brightness of stars. GUESTS: Sandi Mann - Senior psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire and the author of The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good Kate Green - A poet, essayist, and former laser physicist; her book, Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth, will be published in July Krystal Douglas - The owner of Music City Sewing, a company that sews custom costumes for entertainers and is currently sewing masks for health care workers Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this edition of the Seven Ages Audio Journal, after news pertaining to the surprising results of DNA studies in West Africa and a Japanese experiment in search of answers about ancient seafaring, we turn our attention to one of the greatest controversies in modern science that unites the fields of archaeology, geology, and climate science: the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. Joining us to discuss it are two leading experts on the topic--a geoarchaeologist and a planetary scientist--who offer their perspectives on the latest developments in support of this hotly debated theory. Christopher R. Moore, PhD, is a geoarchaeologist and Special Projects Director with the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program. His research interests include site formation processes and geochronology of stratified sites in the southeastern Coastal Plain, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, early hunter-gatherer adaptations, lithic technology, and immunological blood residue analysis of stone tools. Chris is also the lead researcher of the White Pond Human Paleoecology Project and has authored and coauthored numerous papers on the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis including one documenting the presence of widespread Platinum anomalies at the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) as well as a recent paper on White Pond (near Elgin, SC) supporting the YD impact hypothesis. Malcolm Lecompte is a planetary scientist and remote sensing specialist. He holds a B.S. with Honors in Physics from the University of Wyoming and an MS in Astro-geophysics from the University of Colorado in Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in Astrophysical, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences in 1984. Lecompte also became affiliated with the Naval Aviation reserve in 1980, and before ending his military flight career in 1991, compiled over 1,000 hours of military aircrew and private pilot time, officially retiring from the Naval Reserve as a Commander in 1998 after 23 years of active service. From 2004 until 2009, after a post-doctoral appointment at the Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Center Astrophysics (as well as a period managing DoD sponsored R&D projects), Lecompte held a faculty position as an Associate Professor and Research Director at Elizabeth City State University's Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research. Now retired, LeCompte has since devoted himself to investigating earth impacts during the late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs by asteroid and comets. He is currently working in collaboration with colleagues at ECSU and other research organizations. Follow the Seven Ages Research Associates online:  Twitter     Instagram     Facebook Below are links to stories covered on this edition of the podcast:  'Ghost' DNA In West Africans Complicates Story Of Human Origins Early Modern Humans Could Sail, Archaeologists Confirm Music featured in this episode: "Horizon" MONIN  (YouTube) "Eva" – 失望した (Youtube)

Clark Strand discusses the cultural shift to banish the dark and argues why we should instead embrace it. Jessica Dwyer talks about the benefits of dark skies. Dava Sobel shares the story of a group of women dedicated to uncovering the secrets of space at the Harvard College Observatory. Tim Slover shares the inspiration behind the Christmas Chronicles.

In this special episode of The Big Questions we chat with Dave Sobel, the Janis Joplin of science writing and author of 'Longitude' and 'Galileo's Daughter' and most recently, 'The Glass Universe'. In the 19th-century Harvard College Observatory began employing women as 'human computers' to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. These women changed the history of astronomy, making extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim - what stars are made of, how to categorise them and discovering a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Connect with Adam Spencer at: https://twitter.com/adambspencer Find LiSTNR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiSTNRau/ Follow LiSTNR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/listnrau/ Follow LiSTNR Australia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/listnrau Download the LiSTNR app from the Apple and Google Play app stores. Or go to listnr.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our final episode of this mini-series on the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory, we dive into the life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin from her time at Cambridge University to her life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt would form the core of the calculation staff at the Harvard College Observatory for nearly two decades.  They oversaw the transition of the Observatory from the directorship of Edward Charles Pickering to Harlow Shapley and established the dominant classification systems and physical laws for stellar spectra and variable stars in the early 20th century that would lead to foundational discoveries in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics.

This week we take an in-depth look at the work done at the Harvard College Observatory on cataloging and classifying variable stars under the direction of Charles Edward Pickering.  We examine the contributions of Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt that resulted in the the period luminosity relationship, also known as Leavitt's Law.

This week we look at the spectral classification work of Antonia Maury and Annie Jump Cannon at the Harvard College Observatory.

In this week's episode we look at the early work of the Harvard College Observatory under the direction of Edward Charles Pickering.  We discuss his three big research initiatives: the visual photometric survey of stars, the All-Sky Survey and Catalogue and the Draper Memorial Catalogue that catalogued and classified the spectra of over 10,000 individual stars.  Instrumental in this last effort was Williamina Fleming: Pickering's one time housekeeper turned lead calculator in the project.

ABOUT DAVA SOBEL Dava Sobel is one of the most prominent, critically acclaimed, bestselling narrative nonfiction writers working today. A former science reporter for the New York Times, she is the recipient of the National Science Board's prestigious Individual Public Service Award, the Boston Museum of Science's Bradford Washburn Award, and many others. She has served as the editor for The Best American Science Writing, and even had an asteroid (#30935) named for her. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker, Audubon, Discover, Life, Omni, and Harvard Magazine. Sobel is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets. THE GLASS UNIVERSE: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars Viking is thrilled to publish Dava Sobel’s THE GLASS UNIVERSE: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars this December. An important, chapter in the history of science, THE GLASS UNIVERSE is a great American story of discovery and progress that is only now being brought to light. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing a few women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the women turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed in this period enabled the ladies to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They developed a classification system for the stars that gained international acceptance and is still in regular use. They also divined the surprising truth about the chemical composition of the heavens and helped establish a scale for measuring distances across space. Written in Dava Sobel's lucid prose and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, THE GLASS UNIVERSE (Viking; on sale: December 6, 2016; $30.00; 9780670016952) tells the riveting story of a group of remarkable women who expanded our knowledge of the universe, and whose discoveries are still being used today. The book opens in 1882, at a New York dinner party for forty members of the National Academy of Sciences hosted by Mrs. Anna Draper, who made great contributions to the practice of astrophotography, and ends with Dr. Cecelia Helena Payne, who became the first female Professor of Astronomy at Harvard, and the first woman promoted to the rank of tenured professor in 1956. THE GLASS UNIVERSE is not only the story of the Harvard Observatory's female astronomers, who were among the first women to become members of international scientific bodies, and won numerous awards and fellowships for their work, it is also the fascinating story of the half a million glass plates they studied, now being digitized for ongoing research. Readers of narrative nonfiction about women and science like Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City; popular histories of ideas like The Age of Wonder and The Metaphysical Club; bestselling science and tech narratives by writers like Neil deGrasse Tyson; and fans of Dava’s own bestselling books are sure to enjoy THE GLASS UNIVERSE. @DavaSobel http://www.davasobel.com/

A near-fatal accident on a mountain leads exoplanet hunter David Kipping to a new goal. David Kipping is an astronomer based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), where he researches extrasolar planets and moons. He is currently fulfilling a Donald Menzel Fellowship at the CfA with the Harvard College Observatory. He is best described as a "modeler," combining novel theoretical modeling with modern statistical data analysis techniques applied to observations. This story was produced as part of the Springer Storytellers series. Hear and read more at http://www.beforetheabstract.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript: In 1872, Henry Draper was the first man to photograph stellar spectra. This was a huge advance on previous practice which just relied on naked eye observations or visual observations where the features in the spectrum had to be described and then transcribed or written down. Draper started on a long project to photograph all the bright stars in the night sky and classify their stellar spectra. He died before the project could be finished, but he left in his will money to Harvard College Observatory to continue and finish the project. Edward Pickering led the project, but most of the work was done by a small set of female computers who actually, by eye, classified tens of thousands stellar spectra in the most tedious and painstaking way imaginable. The first classification was based on the strength of the hydrogen absorption features in the stellar spectrum. Class A of stars had the deepest hydrogen features, class B the next deepest, C the less deep, and so on up to letter P. Most of the features in the spectra were from hydrogen and some were from helium. All other features due to other elements were lumped together in the category called metals which is clearly a misnomer because many of the elements heavier than helium are not actually metallic.

Transcript: Over a hundred years ago dozens of women labored in the basement of the Harvard College Observatory paving the way for a modern understanding of stars. These women were paid 25 cents an hour, less than half of what a man would make for similar work, to do the painstaking and tedious work of classifying photographic stellar spectra. Large photographic plates had thousands of individual tiny spectra superimposed on them. The women observed these spectra through a magnifier glass, made notes of the wavelengths of the prominent lines, and calculated the positions and wavelengths of the lines. No computers existed at the time, so these calculations were very tedious. These women were not allowed to be staff members of Harvard College Observatory. They could not take classes, and they could not even earn a degree at Harvard University where they worked. Their work, however, was central to the understanding of stars by classification. Annie Cannon was the most prominent of these stellar classifiers or computers. In her working life she classified over 225 thousand stars, individually and by hand, and she made large and increasing contributions to the subject as she more deeply understood the nature of stellar spectra. The stellar classification scheme that she produced is still in use today.