Reach Across the Stars: New App Offers Interactive Exploration of Women in Astronomy

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Women's contributions to astronomy date back centuries. Learn more about female astronomers past and present with a new app.

Today, more women than ever are studying space. The number of female physicists, astronomers, mathematicians and more is steadily rising, after centuries of male overrepresentation in science. This has meant more role models for girls and young women deciding what they want to do with their future, and an increased diversity of viewpoints and ideas for science as a whole.

But of course, it wasn’t always that way. Women were historically excluded from scientific research, something that only began to slowly change in the last century. But that doesn’t mean that women haven’t been part of science. In astronomy alone, female astronomers, mathematicians and scientists did fundamental observing work, discovered comets, organized star catalogs and more.

That’s changed in recent years as books, movies and more have illuminated the lives of these brilliant women — not least of which was the movie, which chronicled the work of female African-American mathematicians at NASA. But women’s contributions to the study of the universe goes back centuries.Beginning in the 18th century, Caroline Herschel, a German astronomer, made observations of the night sky, looking for new nebulae and comets.

An illustration from Volume 77 of Philosophical Transactions, with six diagrams showing comets found by Caroline Herschel and her brother, William, along with their positions.More than a century after Herschel, Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming would also make important contributions to a star catalog.

The hidden figures included Dorothy Vaughan, a mathematician who spent nearly three decades working for the U.S. government, at both the precursor to NASA and NASA itself. There, she supervised a group of “human computers” who carried out the complex calculations necessary to send rockets to orbit and bring astronauts back down safely.

 

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