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Henrietta Swan Leavitt
An American astronomer whose discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variable stars…
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Hello! My name is Henrietta Swan Leavitt. When I was a little girl, I loved looking up at the night sky. The stars twinkled like tiny diamonds, and I always wondered what they were and how far away they could be. I wanted to learn all their secrets.
When I grew up, I got a very special job at a place called the Harvard College Observatory. My job was to be a 'computer'. That is not like the computers we have today! My job was to look at pictures of the stars that were taken with a big telescope. I would look very, very closely at these pictures, which were on glass plates. I would measure how bright or dim each star was. It was like being a detective for the stars!
While I was looking at the stars, I noticed something amazing! Some of the stars weren't just shining; they were blinking, like little fireflies. I saw that the brightest stars blinked very slowly, and the dimmer stars blinked very fast. It was a secret pattern! This pattern helped other scientists figure out how far away the stars really are.
I lived to be 53 years old. My discovery was like making a map of the sky. It helps us understand just how big and wonderful our universe is, and people still use my star map today to explore the cosmos.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt: The Star Counter
Hello! My name is Henrietta Swan Leavitt. When I was a little girl, I loved looking up at the night sky. The stars twinkled like tiny diamonds, and I always wondered what they were and how far away they could be. I wanted to learn all their secrets.
When I grew up, I got a very special job at a place called the Harvard College Observatory. My job was to be a 'computer'. That is not like the computers we have today! My job was to look at pictures of the stars that were taken with a big telescope. I would look very, very closely at these pictures, which were on glass plates. I would measure how bright or dim each star was. It was like being a detective for the stars!
While I was looking at the stars, I noticed something amazing! Some of the stars weren't just shining; they were blinking, like little fireflies. I saw that the brightest stars blinked very slowly, and the dimmer stars blinked very fast. It was a secret pattern! This pattern helped other scientists figure out how far away the stars really are.
I lived to be 53 years old. My discovery was like making a map of the sky. It helps us understand just how big and wonderful our universe is, and people still use my star map today to explore the cosmos.
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An American astronomer whose discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variable stars allowed astronomers to measure the distance to faraway galaxies, fundamentally changing the understanding of the universe.
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