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Topic: Henrietta Swan Leavitt


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In the News (Sun 3 Jun 12)

  
  A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries: Henrietta Leavitt
Henrietta Leavitt was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of a Congregational minister.
Leavitt's work with variable stars led to her most important contribution to the field: the cepheid variable period-luminosity relationship.
Leavitt was not allowed to pursue her own topics of study, but researched what the head of the observatory assigned.
www.pbs.org /wgbh/aso/databank/entries/baleav.html   (308 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt Summary
Leavitt used 299 plates from 13 telescopes, and compared stars ranging from the fourth to the twenty-first magnitude in brightness (each increasing unit of magnitude corresponds to a reduction in brightness by a factor of 2.512 on a logarithmic scale).
Leavitt reasoned that since the Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds were nearly all the same distance from Earth, their periods were related to their light output: the longer the period of pulsation, the brighter the star.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4 1868 – December 12 1921) was an American astronomer, as well as being the deaf [1] daughter of a Congregational church minister [2].
www.bookrags.com /Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt   (3428 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1868.
Henrietta is known for her 1904 discovery of a type of variable stars named cepheid variables.
Henrietta found that when observing a cepheid variable in another galaxy, she could relate the length of the brightness cycle to the size of the star.
www.windows.ucar.edu /tour/link=/people/leavitt.html&edu=high   (266 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Massachusetts in 1868.
Henrietta is known for her discovery of a type of variable stars named cepheid variables.
Henrietta found that when observing a cepheid variable, she could relate the length of the brightness cycle to the size of the star.
www.windows.ucar.edu /tour/link=/people/leavitt.html   (215 words)

  
 Reference.com/Encyclopedia/Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Leavitt began work in 1893 at Harvard College Observatory as one of the women "computers" brought in by Edward Charles Pickering to measure and catalog the brightness of stars in the observatory's photographic plate collection.
One year after Leavitt reported her results, Ejnar Hertzsprung determined the distance of several Cepheids in the Milky Way, and with this calibration the distance to any Cepheid could be determined.
The asteroid 5383 Leavitt and the Leavitt crater on the Moon are named in her honour.
www.reference.com /browse/wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt   (458 words)

  
 HOA: HOA Materials
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1892.
Leavitt's greatest discovery came from her study of 1777 variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds.
She had the happy faculty of appreciating all that was worthy and lovable in others, and was possessed of a nature so full of sunshine that, to her, all of life became beautiful and full of meaning.
hoa.aavso.org /leavitt.html   (395 words)

  
 Henrietta Leavitt - A Bright Star of Astronomy; Resonance June 2001
Leavitt's principal task was to standardise the method of calculating the brightness of the star in the sky from the measurement on the photographic plate.
Leavitt argued that since all the stars in the small Magellanic cloud were situated in a small part of the sky, it was reasonable to assume that they were more or less at the same distance from us.
Henrietta Leavitt made the prime discovery of her scientific life at a time when women scientists were often looked down upon by their male colleagues.
www.ias.ac.in /resonance/June2001/June2001p2-3.html   (1073 words)

  
 Famous Science and Inovvators- Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Leavitt was drafted to the task, and by 1902 she already had a regular job at the observatory.
Leavitt focused on one group of variable stars, called the Cepheid variables, which are pulsating stars, stars whose atmosphere alternately grows and shrinks, causing their brightness to increase or decrease together with their pulsating.
Leavitt noticed that the cyclical rhythm of the pulsating of each star was regular, and that there this rhythm and was proportional to the intensity of light emitted by the star.
www.mada.org.il /website/html/eng/2_1_1-31.htm   (1188 words)

  
 Leavitt, Henrietta Swan (1868-1921)
Leavitt was made head of the department of photographic photometry and it was while studying photographic plates made at Harvard's field station in Peru, that she discovered in 1912 that Cepheid variables show a simple relationship between period and luminosity.
Using Leavitt's work as a springboard, first Ejnar Hertzsprung, then Harlow Shapley, and finally Walter Baade, were able to use the Cepheids as a cosmic distance indicator.
Leavitt also did much work on other variable stars, discovering about 2,400 – roughly half of those known in her time.
www.daviddarling.info /encyclopedia/L/Leavitt.html   (224 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt Biography | Encyclopedia of World Biography
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1868, where she was one of seven children.
Her parents were Henrietta Swan Kendrick and George Roswell Leavitt, a Congregationalist minister whose parish was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Leavitt first made the observation in 1904 that there was a relationship between how long a Cepheid took to complete one of these cycles and its ultimate magnitude.
www.bookrags.com /biography/henrietta-swan-leavitt   (1809 words)

  
 CANOPUS 02/09 - How did Henrietta do it   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was a clerk at Harvard College Observatory.
Henrietta correctly concluded that the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud are all very approximately equally far from the Earth if the Cloud is very far away.
Henrietta Leavitt was thus quite correct when she pointed out that the Magellanic Clouds must be very far away.
www.aqua.co.za /assa_jhb/new/canopus/Can2002/c029LitU.htm   (735 words)

  
 HLeavitt
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts.
Leavitt’s interest in astronomy began during her senior year in college when she took an astronomy class.
Leavitt devised a system, using “the north polar sequence” as a gage of brightness for stars during her investigations.
www.womanastronomer.com /hleavitt.htm   (579 words)

  
 Amazon.ca: Miss Leavitts Stars: Books: George Johnson   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
Henrietta Leavitt was an unmarried clergyman's daughter who began working at the observatory soon after graduating from Radcliffe.
Leavitt wasn't interested in pushing her discovery to its logical conclusion, but other astronomers quickly grasped the ramifications for calculating the size of the Milky Way and the universe.
Leavitt died in 1921, leaving behind her magnum opus: "the measurements for her North Polar Sequence, ninety-six stars whose magnitude she had determined with such authority and care they could be used as a standard for the rest of the sky." Given Leavitt's neglect, this tale is as frustrating as it is spellbinding.
www.amazon.ca /Miss-Leavitts-Stars-George-Johnson/dp/0393051285   (568 words)

  
 Dr. Edith Marie Flanigen
Henrietta Leavitt (a young woman who had attended Oberlin College and the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women before a severe illness destroyed her hearing) joined his staff in 1902.
She was employed by Pickering as a computer, and as such, she discovered 10% of the 20,000 pulsating stars that we have currently mapped (half of all the known variable stars even in 1930).
Henrietta Leavitt was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Association of University Women, the American Astronomical and Astrophysical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an honorary member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers.
membership.acs.org /c/chicago/WCC/leavitt.html   (457 words)

  
 Inventor of the Week: Archive
Henrietta Swan Leavitt invented one of the most essential standards in the study of space: a rule that allows astronomers to measure distances from Earth to various stars.
Being a woman, Leavitt was not taken very seriously by Edward Charles Pickering (1846-1919), then the world's expert in photographic photometry (determining the magnitude of a star from its photographic image).
Leavitt realized that the variable stars' cycles must depend not on how bright they appear ("apparent" luminosity), but how bright they really are ("intrinsic" or "absolute" luminosity).
web.mit.edu /invent/iow/leavitt.html   (320 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt...SciPeeps.com
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 - December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer.
When Cepheids were detected in other galaxies such as the Andromeda galaxy, the distance to those galaxies could then be determined.
The asteroid 5383 Leavitt is named in her honour.
www.scipeeps.com /henriettaswanleavitt.html   (133 words)

  
 Stockdale Henrietta - Search Results - MSN Encarta   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
Stockdale, Henrietta (1847-1911), South African nurse and missionary known as Sister Henrietta.
Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), queen consort of England, the wife of King Charles I and mother of Charles II.
Leavitt, Henrietta Swan (1868-1921), American astronomer, whose work made possible the first accurate determination of extragalactic distances....
uk.encarta.msn.com /Stockdale_Henrietta.html   (96 words)

  
 The unknown trailblazer | The San Diego Union-Tribune
Leavitt was good enough at this task that after a decade she got a raise to 30 cents.
Almost at once astronomers understood that they would be able to apply Leavitt's discovery to other variable stars, and that it would enable them to calculate distances across the vastest stretches of the universe –; if they could first figure out the distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Johnson devotes the final third of the book to how Leavitt's peers determined that distance, and to how subsequent generations, including today's, have used the period-luminosity relationship to hopscotch across the cosmos to a distance of 13 billion light-years, making leaps of faith every step of the way.
www.signonsandiego.com /uniontrib/20050814/news_lz1v14leavitt.html   (850 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer, as well as being the deaf[1]daughter of a Congregational church minister [2].
She was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts to an old Massachusetts Puritan family which had settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early part of the seventeenth century.
"Henrietta Swan Leavitt." In Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt   (449 words)

  
 Mass Moments: Henrietta Leavitt Buried in Cambridge
...in 1921, Henrietta Leavitt, a scientist at the Harvard Observatory, was buried in Cambridge.
Leavitt published her findings, which other astronomers used to estimate the location of star clusters in our galaxy.
A modest woman, Leavitt did not seek acclaim for her findings, but she was proud of her profession.
www.massmoments.org /moment.cfm?mid=358   (1033 words)

  
 SJSU Virtual Museum   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
During her time at Harvard, she worked with Annie Jump Cannon to measure the visual magnitudes of stars.
Leavitt's main research interest was photographic photometry, the problem of determining the brightness or magnitude of a star from a photographic image.
She also investigated variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds and discovered 1,777 new variable stars.
www.sjsu.edu /depts/Museum/lea.html   (140 words)

  
 Leavitt, Henrietta Swan
Henrietta Swan Leavitt, fille de George Roswell Leavitt, ministre congrégationaliste, et de Henrietta Swan Kendrick Leavitt, a six frères et soeurs.
Henrietta porte à un sommet les vertus de ses ancêtres puritains.
Henrietta meurt d'un cancer, en 1921, âgée de 53 ans.
cartage.org.lb /fr/themes/Biographies/mainbiographie/L/leavitt/1.html   (452 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt
El mayor descubrimiento de Leavitt vino de su estudio de 1777 estrellas variables de las Nubes de Magallanes.
El problema fue encomendado a Leavitt, que comenzó con una secuencia de 46 estrellas en la vecindad del polo norte celeste.
Entonces Leavitt estableció secuencias estándares secundarias a partir de 15 a 22 estrellas de la referencia en cada uno de 48 "Harvard Standard Regions" del cielo, usando las fotografías proporcionadas por observatorios alrededor del mundo.
www.astrogea.org /surveys/Henrietta_Leavitt.htm   (1531 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt pioneer woman in science
Henrietta was an American astronomer, whose research made possible the first accurate determination of extragalactic distances.
Her work helped to prove that galaxies were not part of the milky way but indeed were `` island universes``.
Henrietta was truly a pioneer woman in humankind history, one of the first woman astronomer and scientist.
www.ondespirale.com /ozmoz/henriettaa.htm   (154 words)

  
 L-M - Women in Astronomy: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Science Reference Services, Library of Congress)
Miss Henrietta Swan Leavitt had done important research work as a member of the staff of Harvard College Observatory.
The portrait accompanying this sketch is not of Leavitt.
Reports the announcement by the Harvard Observatory of the "discovery of 25 new variable stars by Miss Henrietta S. Leavitt," citing the Springfield Republican as its source.
www.loc.gov /rr/scitech/womenastro/womenastro-lm.html   (812 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
Henrietta Swan Leavitt, although hearing impaired, was educated at Oberlin and Radcliffe Colleges.
Upon joining the Harvard Observatory Staff, Edward Pickering, director, assigned her the task of sorting the stars of the northern polar sequence by magnitude and brightness.
No materials on any of the Mill Valley Middle School Net's WWW pages may be copied without express written permission from the author.
www.mvschools.org /ms/projects/chaney/leavitt.html   (167 words)

  
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
While working at the Harvard College Observatory on a survey of Cepheid variable stars (stars the luminosity, or brightness, of which varies in an extremely regular manner) she discovered (1912) that the Cepheids having the greatest average brightness also had the longest periods of variation.
When, in 1913, the Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung accurately estimated the distances of a few Cepheids, the distances of all Cepheids could be calculated from Leavitt's period-luminosity correlation.
This method of distance determination greatly increased the scientific knowledge of the physical universe.
www.distinguishedwomen.com /biographies/leavitt.html   (116 words)

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