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Following Her Stars
Following Her Stars
“As We Were” Group Photograph of Women Astronomical Computers at the Harvard College Observatory, 1925.
Left to right, bottom to top: Agnes Hoovens, Mary B. Howe, Harvia Wilson, Margaret Mayall, Antonia Maury, Lilian Hodgdon, Margaret Harwood, Annie Jump Cannon, Evelyn Leland, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Ida Woods, Arville Walker, Mabel Gill, Edith Gill, Florence Cushman.
Following Her Stars is an educational initiative from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), in collaboration with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO). Designed for middle school learners, the project brings to life the inspiring and often overlooked stories of the Women Astronomical Computers who worked at HCO in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Through a series of connected digital resources, Following Her Stars invites students to explore astronomy using real scientific tools and historic materials. Learners can engage with:
the StarGlass digital archive of over 400,000 astronomical glass plates,
the stories of more than 200 women who made key contributions to this collection, and
the MicroObservatory Robotic Telescope Network, a free online tool that lets students capture their own images of the night sky—just like the women computers once did.
By following a rich trail of artifacts, images, and data, Following Her Stars connects learners with the history of astronomical discovery and the remarkable women who helped shape it.
The Harvard Plate Stacks
The Harvard Plate Stacks
The Harvard Plate Stacks is the Harvard College Observatory's collection of astronomical glass plate photographs and is the most extensive collection of its kind in the world. The Plate Stacks make up over a century of irreplaceable scientific observations and is the first full image of the visible Universe. The core of the collection was founded with the generous funding of Anna Palmer Draper for the creation of the Henry Draper Memorial in 1886. Now, the collection spans over 550,000 spectral and direct image negatives that cover both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Hundreds of women studied and curated the photographs in the Plate Stacks while making scientific discoveries of their own, but their work often went unrecognized. The Harvard Plate Stacks is dedicated to understanding and undoing the erasure of these women’s contributions while advancing and enabling the creation of new knowledge using the collection.
StarGlass
StarGlass is a new database that provides access to the world's largest historical images of stars, galaxies, and the Universe. Use StarGlass to search the Harvard Plate Stacks collection for glass plate negatives by the date they were made, the astronomical objects they captured, the historic Women Astronomical Computers that used them, along with over 2,500 individual notebooks created by these pioneering scientists.
MicroObservatory
MicroObservatory
MicroObservatory Telescope on site in Amado, Arizona.
MicroObservatory is a free network of robotic telescopes that anyone can control online. Created by scientists and educators at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the system is designed to help students and curious minds across the country explore the wonders of the night sky—just like professional astronomers.
The telescopes are located at observatories connected to the Center for Astrophysics, including the historic Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Smithsonian's Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona. Through MicroObservatory, learners can request images of planets, galaxies, and other deep-sky objects, capturing the same kinds of celestial views studied by astronomers for generations, including the Women Astronomical Computers.
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