History's Forgotten: Season 2 Episode 2: Women in Astronomy

In the second episode of season two of History’s Forgotten, seniors Christi Norris, Amanda Hare and Caleb Audia discuss women in astronomy in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the Harvard Observatory, women were hired to work as "computers" who organized data. Two women, Annie Cannon and Henrietta Leavitt, were able to make substantial achievements. Cannon came up with a system to classify stars that's still used today and Leavitt discovered Cepheid variable stars which can be used to find the distances of other stars and galaxies. Topics Covered: Annie Cannon Henrietta Leavitt Charles Pickering Harvard Observatory