I just realized we did not do a sound check. I love doing book events. We need to keep books alive but thanks to the Simon Foundation for supporting all of our initiatives here and it is with our support to give a shout out and before we introduce our guests the amateur Astronomer Association of new york will be out. And will have the telescope out but the claim is the clouds will clear almost as we finish the last question. And we will do a little q a. I am sure you have heard of our guest. As a bestselling author in superb writer you said your son asked you what you were working on. He said nobody will read that. And of course galileos daughter was a popular book and more so to be knowledge with the Pulitzer Prize nomination is quite an honor. And with that Harvard College observatory. [applause] also as an assistant professor. And to the synchronicity and in their very different perspectives one as an artist do you mind being called a historian . I brought a terrible thing. I did not bring my clicker so can you advance the slides or can somebody get my clicker in my bag on the second floor . [laughter] we are rough around the edges. Go back to the first slide. So tonight conversation is so named because hundreds of thousands, 500,000 that women of the Harvard College observatory uses the innovative technique but of course sociologically before we have the right to vote. But this gaggle of women allegedly and they are so disgusted with the computers that my maid could do better job. And the scottish may did a fine job. Part of the real story is he also had a scottish made would work for him on the residence side. A pregnant woman no longer with her husband she was abandoned by her husband immediately to realize she was too intelligent to be working as a maid or domestic servants and we moved her to the observatory to gave her some computing work and then went on to become the first woman at harvard to have University Title so it depends on how you count. 1879. Only two years. Then she had to go home to have the baby then come back. 1881 is the year. Ms. Fleming. This was taken before but she is no longer there. She has died but but to start at the observatory in 1896. Next to the globe looking down to become for their classification when you learn the types of stars with the characteristics of the stars but also the woman sitting at the drafting table. But she was the first president. They were all graduate students were women. To already die with the education program. And those that paid for the research and also paid to establish fellowships for young women to come work at the observatory for one year. Then they can go somewhere else. It is amazing so do you mean the first woman . So do you strongly club did not exist and the expansion was to include men . And then to oversee the very first male phd candidate. And then without assistance. With mathematicians or astronomers. So lets go to the next light. Who . So ms. Fleming the one we are talking about first. So that greatest expansion so ms. Draper decided to do a serious project with her husband and he died so to be that independently wealthy woman to carry out the Research Program to have it named for her husband. But pickering was 30 years old in this picture when he took over the observatory. Why are they hiring a physicist to run the observatory . It is interesting because i was moved by this in a compromised position to be a maid. So i dont think he could hypothesize about women be breaking boundaries without any hesitation. And then send the results for publication. By also looking at this history . Also encouraging women to publish under their own name. If you were a computer at the observatory were part of the Bigger Picture or research but whenever discoveries were made and what they were publishing each year. So with that social burden he had severe limitations. And i am quoting from some of your books women with a knack for figures could be accommodated when they give credit to the profession. But he prefaces that to say, while it would be unseemly conceded the cold and winter of telescope computing then he talks about the computers he could not conceive of the operating the scopes. But she was the first to use the telescope she was the first to use the telescope. That he saw them to be valuable but also did not financially value them as much tonight as a part of his story. And those who are getting out the rise of womens colleges. I actually have the numbers with 25 cents an hour . But in your book you used if you take that times 285 to get the current amount that is like 6. 16 per hour but the males came at 1500 per year not scaling up for inflation for inflation completely in support and then to fire a complaint about that. But she keeps a diary. And names her son after him as well. Thats right. She goes back to scotland to have his baby out of wedlock. That is pretty significant how much she admired him. And then to be devoted in a lot of ways. They were a collegial group working in close quarters days a week and socialize on saturday night. That is tough. It has to be understandable it was toilsome. Truly toilsome. Working insane hours and a good deal of tedium involved. You get the sense that they are fatigued at times but never ungrateful or resentful. No. We are aware they were in groundbreaking research. Including pickering that science was more important and these other things socially and and one that i felt from reading your history is that it made no sense to be concerned about anything else that yet seems to think no not one additional amount of work is too much no matter the hours. If i raise the question of salary he says do i have a home to keep or family to take care of as well as the men . If they have no claims to such comfort this is the enlightened age she says. This is rich in before the women had the right to vote. But what was very interesting this is a crucial point. We still live with unequal gender pay. And also she starts to feel her were must not be of value not paid equally. I was so focused on the archives and visual i was drawn to the scrapbooks that is cut out of the current newspapers. And out of the archives. But the story flips very quickly that it is that understanding material of newspaper clippings with the recognition but at the same time but then the president of harvard refuses to give for that title. Though the new president. So she is known worldwide and has set the classification system used today but but is not even recognizing the brilliant scientist within the corral at harvard. And to be visually recruited. Im sorry i dont have any of those pictures. The next slide . But to speak around the observation the reporter writing things down. What think of using emulsion and but pickerings genius genius was to create this archive that still exist half a million gas class plates are in the building that was constructed specifically to hold them all and keep him safe from fire. He was very afraid of what woul would. Things used to burn down a lot in colonial times. [laughter] it is a lot of what. But to observe being through the telescope you would collect a record over hours and stars would show up that could not be seen by di in the telescope then you daddy a series of photographs how the stars changed over time. That is why they needed so many women. So what is amazing so 100 years ago at the sky itself. This is still very relevant imagery with the birth of photography itself with the first images of the sky. But it is relevant now. It pays to look back at the harvard record. So what came out of that so those little tiny strips are the spectra of all the stars and there is a prison over the telescope so you see the lights spread out into the component colors. So to see the lines in the spectra and then to decipher the chemicals but i cannot remember which of the women made the discovery which was the abundance of hydrogen. So we dont think of hydrogen as being overwhelmingly abundant to have your elements and spew that back out into the universe. Second or Third Generation material but with that original stuff she did not think about the big bang but it is mostly just hydrogen you cannot make carbon and oxygen until you make the stars. It was a deep discovery. But the composition of the stars so with the idea most of the universe tested of those two elements. So to notice in the spectra to say hydrogen is responsible isnt that how a lot of that was done . Its probably a spurious result. She at first thought this is what i observed. Whats interesting is you point out in your book its such a new subject that it was sent so far out there for an astronomer to make a discovery and speculated the same time because everything was just being discovered at that time. Shes absolutely right and it predates einsteins predictions that led to the prediction of the big bang. Im not sure exactly the year. It could have been close. Its pretty close. So its close but is not in the vernacular of everybody. Einstein didnt believe in the big bang. After people derived it from his own theories so its a long time between that and people starting to understand that the universe is very involved in its elementary stuff. Its pretty amazing. This is Henrietta Leavitt who was looking at that magnificent images, who was looking at images taken from south america. This whole sky had to be covered. There was a second observatory built in peru that started in the Southern Hemisphere and she was looking at images of the Magellanic Clouds and to discover 12,000 veritable stars and made a fundamental discovery about the pattern of variation that the stars that took the longest time to go to their cycles would be the brightest stars and she figured all of the star she was looking at were roughly the same distance away so they really were brighter. That observation went to the first usable yardstick for measuring what we would call galactic distances and take distances and her work enabled the milky way to be determined and i may be getting ahead of the slides here. It was not the only galaxy in the universe and the universe consisted of multiple galaxies. Would the fair to say at that time they were sure the universe was just a few hundred thousand lightyears across and that was it. In times and the shape of the universe led to us looking at geometry of spiral galaxies within that geometry. Was good to the next slide. So we have tell me about this. This is a place that Henrietta Swan leavitt was looking at. Most of the places as david said our 8. 5 by 11. Stand by 14, 17. The standard size and different place would fit with different telescopes and hear what she has done that she has overlaid it with a grid. This is a small Magellanic Clouds. In my research that we were working without knowing each other i would go out to the harvard glass plate archives and look for the little initial on the cover of the class play. You can see carefully the curator had made a cheat sheet that had everyones initials and so this is the plates used as source material. Next slide. Next slide please. This is one of your pieces. This is a painting that is done with ink on a translucent piece of film and i wanted to not just make imagery that would reflect what these women were looking at but the final image itself would reflect their work with the glass plates. The painting is done on a translucent piece of paper and if you go into. How big was the paper . 60 by 60. We have work on the newly built a wall the wall. The wall was painted this morning. So the good piece on the left is the scale of this piece and we will get to how you make the physical piece up here. Lets see the next slide, please. Okay thats it. Thats the one on the wall. Lets just explain the philosophy of this. The thing that fascinated me about the glass plate itself was not just that it was the first record of the sky. The four fewer and is garner yet to be a draftsman so youd have to make drying and also say this is a certain luminosity perhaps dava or so they may have been different interpretation that they were studying the glass plates and rarely would they print them and positives. Its a reference to the evolution of the photographic process. It starts off with a photographic negative printed into its positive but the image was never photographed. They are images of stars preprinted by using our son so its multilayered in its meaning in the process. Lets see the next slide, please. Lia i should say so artist with a lot of science residents in the Science Department. You can see my equations on the back there. And its now been demolished and its being rebuilt as we speak. Theres lia in the Science Department working on a large piece. Here you are building what you call the negative. Can we go to the next slide . Thats us goofing off. This is the collaboration. The next slide and who do we have here . We have lost all of our etiquette. That is mrs. Fleming standing by one of the cupboards where she keeps her glass plates. She was there for a very long time, wasnt she . She really oversaw the women that were working. Did she oversee any of the men or were they two separate groups . She mostly oversaw the women. They were operating the telescope. She identified an enormous number of objects. Is that right . She discovered hundreds of variable stars and i think we have a picture. She has this record of the most discoveries in of the variable stars at the time probably worldwide. Definitely by ms. Leavitt. Lets see the next slide please. Tell me about that. Identifying different plates the theory that im working on is tied to one discovery that one of these women made so this is the horse head nebula. The horse head is upside down and if you look on a contemporary image it looks a little bit more force like but this is after wilhelm in a fleming. Can we go to the next slide please . I love this picture. Over there in the corner. It looks like she is working on an ipad. Did does, doesnt it . Its glass plates and she has to than the frames that they use. Its very fragile. When you work on them theres a danger that they will break which is why they are all digitized now soap scientists can have access to them easily. They dont use this process that much anymore. Its 100 years of the night sky. Amazing. Next slide, please. This is the computing realm. Hard at work. It amazed me what these women and or it because theres this wonderful opportunity to contribute to science. It was very difficult commitment. It was not at looks areas commitment or not a commitment to an easy life or a life of any kind of physical comfort. They were poor and they suffered all kinds of illnesses. Illnesses for a real threat and they worked absurd hours. What did you think about uncovering those details . Is cold and flu. They have the same elements as we had. They nominally worked regular hours but then of course anybody who is really involved in research knows that you dont stop at 5 00 or 6 00. They were very committed. What they gave up at the beginning was certainly any kind of home life. Mrs. Fleming was unique as a working mother and the sole supporter of her son. And most of the times the women wanted to get married. That was the end of her career. There is a line where someone says the into that effect that its no longer the end of your career wants to get married and this was a big change. Anything about what you are saying about the long hours is they are given the task that in a lot of ways is really just mindnumbing labeling stars and looking at the spectra but they are not given enough time to make their own conclusions. An example would be like henrietta. She discovered variables and that gave us a yardstick to measure the universe but shes not in the situation where c. He is a researcher to make the jump which is implied later on in our talk to take over as the discoverer. In the slide of four that annie joe cannon would shes hired shes fully unique because hes hired on amazed at your to work the telescope at night and ends up in peru physically writing about the telescope and pushing it around and playing with the lenses. Its different than most of the other computers. And theres the frustration that they dont have the opportunity to extend their work. Theres a sense they know there is a great volume of material but also some implications and to get the sense that they feel this frustration of not being able to pursue it. That certainly the retrospect of you. Im not sure they felt that. I did admire in your book that you did not try to impose the lens of the present on the past and you take it as it is and i think thats what keeps a certain moments in the book of clarity when these women speak in their own words and theres so much impact as you have not it at all. You havent diluted the impact. When it comes i think its really powerful. And was when ms. Cannon goes to the meeting about spectral classification and shes the only woman at a table of men. She writes in her journal since i had done most of the world work on the subject i had to do most of the talking. She takes it in stride and why we are on annie joe cannon this is a little bit out of context so shes talking about a personal trauma but she said may be led into a youthful busy life. Im not afraid of work. I long for it. And this idea just of recognition versus participation in the beginning of the observatory pickering puts out an ad and he gets endless responses from educated women who had just gotten out of college who are willing to come to the observatory and are basically begging to work for free, not 25 cents an hour but for free. I think the recognition of discovery but they just wanted to work. They just wanted to work and to contribute. Next slide, please. Its amazing. She discovered a comet in 1847 which made her world famous famous. No one messed with her. She looks like shes ready to take it off the standard swing it. Matthew hired her as professor of astronomy and she came to work at harvard. Mariah many people think is an unsung genius of church extraordinary. Theres a great book on Mariah Mitchell. And she was very admired. Can we see the next slide . These are also students at wellesley. Annie was a third the third from the right she was working the physics lab that had been modeled on pickerings lab and annie cannons teacher had been a pickering student. Thats why her education equipped her to be the first woman at the observatory who could use the telescope. I think its important to acknowledge the impact of the womens college. This is incredibly impactful and pickering knew it. He thought very highly of the womens colleges and there was a lot of aggression against them. And he would say all you have to do is look at what these women are producing to understand the impact and people just knew. They could see the contributions they were making to science so people would understand the importance of womens colleges. To add to the concept of time and what was going on in the world at this point when hes hiring the computers which is 40 years before women get the right to vote. Thats just mindblowing. 40 years before women to vote theres a there is a room of 20 women at the Harvard Observatory doing physics. Its pretty incredible. Id like you to tell us how we went from there to where we were in the 70s and early 80s . How did that happened . Thats a whole other story. Can we get the next slide please. Crying trying to keep my eye on the time. This is through the first absorb or very near the town of arequipa. Thats at a later stage in the shadow of a volcano they thought was extinct. Lets get to the nonextinct but this is relevant because it was built. This was built by the Harvard Group with a wonderful endowment that was able to secure and it enabled the photography of the southern sky. How problematic had the volcano than . Arequipa which had been perfect the rainy season got longer and longer so they moved everything to south africa. I also want to point out when you said that this was because of the donation it was because of a donation from a separate female donor. That was really another totally bizarre part of the lineage of the Harvard Observatory that it was run by women and also funded by women. Captain wilkes bruce paid for the telescope. We are going to go out of order. Can we go one more . This is in the dome that we were just looking at. Pickering wanted a new much larger telescope. She came forward and wrote a check. He also spent some of his own wallet. Can we go back to the picnic scene . Tell me about that. Bailey and his wife ruth are there. They started the place and i think your next picture is the lobular cluster. He became very interested in these globular clusters of stars stars, technical term. A big glob of stars and he noticed that they were full of variable stars which he was sent to sudan. In the closeup picture he and his wife would try to count the number of stars in each cluster. When they got close to the center it was impossible. Then they were also looking at pictures of the same clusters over time to see the variations. Lia is this one of the plates . I think this is the last plate. Its interesting because until they could understand distances they didnt know where these globular clusters were. Now we know there are some in other galaxies but the ones we are looking at here is a collection of stars. If you imagine our galaxy as a spiral the clusters live a little more freely. How would you know looking at this weather was in your own galaxy are incredibly far away. You see no extension in space of the stars. You cant tell by that. How would you tell and this is why it was so important as you were mentioning with henrietta that she gave us a way to gauge the distance. I decided to throw this in. This is the globular cluster taken by the hubble telescope. We do a little better now. We can see tremendous detail but you think about the timescale between when these women were working at hubble will come to after whom the telescope is made after some of the most impactful work and these satellites is launched several decades later. Its extraordinarily short scale to think about going from where they were with these glass plates to launching an object into space. Or even saying is a soptic in our galaxy . When they started doing their study of the glass plates we didnt know what a galaxy was pretty even the definition. Theres a real idea floated that our galaxy was an entire universe and thats all that there was. Of course now we know there are many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stores in our galaxy. Can we see the next slide . One more. This is one of the most interesting parts of the plates is the actual notation that the women would use india inc. On top of the glass plates so david mention they are undergoing a process to scan each of the glass plates. They are photographing all the beautiful calligrapher he almost on top of it Different Things from numbering systems to classification and what they are doing is they are scraping the plates and photographing them. Harvard looks at this as an archive of astronomy not as a story of the women of harvard. How do delikat word that plays when you handle them . Are they unbelievably precious . Do you have someone breathing down your neck when you are in the room . They show you very carefully you dont touch the plate. You can see all the leaves for the most part are original and thats why you can see. Some of them are extraordinary. This leads themselves have beautiful writing. Initials of different women in different writing back and forth. The next slide, please. This is getting to the process of how you make these. This is based on one of the nebula that i found of the plate and its upstairs on the third floor. Sunny california and one of my studio assistants natalie is here. Can we see the next slide while you talk . We are doing our theory everyone. This is the chemistry for then and now types. We take this video and turned into a dark room blocking everything out and mixing photo emulsion and coding it on a largescale watercolor paper. Next slide please. Now we have turned on the lights for the photograph. Youd turned his duty onto dark room. Go to the next slide and then the negative is pressed in between this painting of photo emulsion on watercolor paper press between glass and its exposed in the sun. Go to the next one. You get these big bats of National Type emotion. Ive been with you when you tested chemicals in this way. You go through a lot of different recipes. Its not like you makes it and you are done. Theres a store bought one if you compared again. How do you come to decide which is the right one . The first print that we did with the small Magellanic Cloud and i think we were printing every friday for three months before we got the very first print. Also the sun moves so that print they use the Exposure Time that you use at noon in the summer in los angeles is different than the Exposure Time you would use in the winter. So the window is very small and changes throughout the day. An Exposure Time of eight minutes becomes 20 minutes when you move two hours into the afternoon. And you have to experiment with all of that. This is the piece on the wall. This is the prints you declare the final print. Each of the prints are of two paintings and they are gaining greater photographic print and you cant make another one by using the negative. Each one has a special around the edges in the dark its hard to figure out if the emulsion is on uniformly. I like that the painting itself has a lot of nebulous at two began it. Sometimes you can tell is that the background in motion for the painting itself. You often exhibit the negative and the positive sidebyside. What defined that choice . If you decide to show the negative or not. Are you thinking about the process as opposed to the final process . The process is really important as work. Its not important just in terms of the artistic process but it highlights the history of the project. Im not a historian so im glad to find out that david was writing this amazing account of these women. I have to tell how i was in the archives and i was meeting a wellknown astronomer owen ginger h. And he said youve got to read david sobels unpublished manuscript of the story. I said how is that going to happen . Theres no way. Actually owen was duly obtained student. Theres a physicist at harvard who is celia paynes an incredible lineage. It was hidden in plain view. Everyone knew there were women there but maybe not understand the full impact. I took women at harvard. They knew that there had been some women working there but they always thought it was a cute and quaint story. They didnt realize they were designing it. Is as interesting as a scientist. I did not know the story until malia brought it to my attention. I had this silly version which was pretty amusing. There really wasnt tell lias work that i started to learn a lot more. I really did not know about it. I think its interesting the idea of education and why cant we be educated in parallel . Scientists who are historians or writers with something that we are not doing right. I also think its interesting i also have found other scientists at harvard who have had the same reaction that you did and knew was there but i didnt know what was which is actually really astounding because the last plates are these physical things. Its not just a story that we have this amazing physical lineage to this story that takes up three stories that you as a ph. D. Student at harvard would walk at the doors of the astronomical archives. I spent time it the center for astrophysics at m. I. T. Didnt even register. I didnt even register it and i was back at harvard are weak in november and all of a sudden i was like oh my god. It was his picture and im sure it had been up there since grad school. Its just funny that i didnt really notice even in the fabric of the building. I went there on most every day for years. Next slide, please. We call this the paper doll. There we are. Henrietta lets with the black bow and annie cannon is all in white with a similar low but not as dark and so this was the staff out for a lark pose like your picture with janna. Im sure will be equally famous. Next slide, please. We were talking about these folks in the context of that photo. People wrote down what they were doing and what they were looking at. I was looking at the handwriting. I was in a lot of ways directed to some of the specific ways that different women were using what i was interested in any physical imagery. I was mentioning annies archives earned different libraries and her notebooks and journals from christmas cards. In the record you can see these endless note takings with their initials on all these things. I think the link to that lineage is really powerful to see a visual replication of all of this and in addition to the glass plates there are intensive card catalogs that map the entire sky. The project itself basically draper was looking to photograph the entire sky and that was an incredible undertaking. Not just that they were taking these last plates and numbering stars but they were mapping the entire sky the north and south hemisphere and just to connect they pieces he dies prematurely end his wife finds the computers at the observatory. His dream was realized without him. Next slide. This is also of my friend maria who is hiding in the audience. Its of a glass plate but it was taken by her iphone of the glass plate. This looks like on drama that we think it was taken, who did we think get it . Maria who did we think did this plate . Is a near neighbor galaxy the nearest spiral galaxy to us. Im not sure exactly the gear of this plate so we dont know if at at the time annie joe cannon made the galaxies were entire collections of hundreds of billions of stars and they were millions of lightyears away and entire other universes would have been called the. This is hubble. This is the difference in terms of the security of the women and hubble is an incredibly famous astronomer. This is probably in the early 1920s. Hubble is an interesting character and we wont go into kabul but he is charming even with his british accent. He was working at mt. Wilson which looms above pasadena and caltech for some of the most powerful telescopes at the time and he was in pursuit of these nebula that may or may not have been in our own galaxy. I love this image. This is a negative image that hollow hubble took at mt. Wilson and its dated the sixth of october 2019. This is a dramatic moment. David do you want to talk about this . Stars are you were singer for round stars. He was identifying part of this nebula and he found a nova up top. He realizes its a variable star and it was one of a variable star. Without he was able to tell distance of the andromeda nebula nebula. That put it far outside the milky way and that was proof that the milky way was not the sum total of the universe. I using levitz work he expands the universe from lightyears suddenly to millions and now as we know its 90 billion lightyears as far as the eye can see and way beyond and its full. This is also andromeda which is relevant to the previous plate. And this is really the moment of the discovery. The universe is huge in their other galaxies and the universe is expanding. I also think it goes back to this idea where these women are able to create the data or the information and they are not given time to do the research and come to their own conclusion. The leavitt is the observatory that gets the letter that someone wants to nominate her for that nobel prize but he doesnt realize she passed away five years before. At the time the director wrote basically if given the time she would have possibly come to her own conclusion but she went on to hand over the yardstick and walk away. It was pretty thoroughly analyze. She really had discovered a mathematical flaw that was allowed her so she did this tremendous amount and maybe she would have gone on to know how to leverage it as a tool. Her discovery which has been known as the. Luminosity many are calling it these leavitt law. Next slide please. Its one of my favorite photographs of andromeda but this is i hubble spacecraft photographed. Theres a lot of color. I like looking at them in black and white. Its a big galaxy about 1000 times bigger than ours. One day they will merge and be all one big galaxy. Next slide. On our closing slide is there any image you want to identify that we missed . Down on the floor as margaret harwood. She was the first one to come to the observatory and have a fellowship name for Mariah Mitchell. She went to work at Mariah Mitchells observatory on nantucket. She was the director there for 40 years. Lia do have favorites . I think because of her adventurous spirit but antonio moret. Whats interesting about her where she was mrs. Drapers niece and she came in and out of working for the observatory that had a family tie to the donor who let all of these on the work work. Correct me if im wrong but wasnt pickering uncomfortable paying salvo is salaried . She did have that reaction. He almost didnt want to hire her. He was paying 25 cents an hour and he thought that was not right. 25 cents was fine. Just to close before we open for questions i wanted to read this quote which is from Mariah Mitchell who was as we said not one of the Harvard Computers and critically influential and she said that mississippi is a 36 and again im our wing. On the best that can be said of me is i have not pretended to what i was not. They thought that was a very lovely summary. I wonder a lot of the sentiments of the women. Definitely industrious and unpretentious. They found a way to be who they really were. Lets not get beyond ourselves but just to accept that despite certain limitations or maybe because of them, and maybe even because they didnt have other opportunities they found a way in that life of their choice. They created a community in and of themselves that was just a really a sense of sharing and experience and they counted them not only getting together socially and doing poetry readings under the night sky, just a really beautiful story. Lets thank our guests and open it up for questions. [applause] we have microphones floating around so if you have a question waved frantically to someone who has a microphone. Over here. If i could do two quick questions. The first is these women worked very hard with their eyes. Did they develop visual problems . Yes. She is the only one record that had to get eyeglasses but you can see just from looking at some of the plates were the strain that would be. My other question is have you figured out where you were going to see a total eclipse of the sun in august . Theres a question in the front and second row. Listening to this im beginning to wonder what happened to the men . Basic way what i hear is these women have everything. They really enjoy their work and they got their recognition from pickering. The only thing they didnt get was money. So how about the men . Did they get recognition . Are you asking where their man at all . They made more money cried right . Thing that they did make more money. They were the telescope operators. You may did they get rid mission inn careered vincennes and there were . Were there famous men . Not so much with computers but being able to take close photographs was very exacting so those people were wellknown. Bailey the one who opened it to differ cognizance work to find a place in south america he published widely. The men were wellknown to. Were the sum crazy theories . Was a daily that had a crazy theory that he wouldnt give up on . Viewing the moon and observing vegetation. Vegetation on the men. Water on the moon. There was a little over sue brents. You mentioned you had to learn about this in your training as a scientist and im wondering if theres a meme out there to define it now but is there any systematic changes in crooked in science curricula and high school . I dont know about high school. I didnt study science and high school. Either from firsthand experience or professional experience but i dont think theres a change in the curriculum. What is important is books like this are published and widely received because the education cant just be limited technical classroom. Reese derek abbott raider are purchased at the impact of science and culture and this is very much our mission at pioneer in this context. Very intentional and its in this context. I think we are changing in a more important way than the curriculum. We are thinking more about who we are in the world and using than using the scientific lens to understand a lot of that. I know there are professors from columbia. Do you feel like speaking to that . The issue of whether the curriculum has been changing over the years . I will say. Is a professor of astronomy and. I think textbooks of today are historically conscious. Henrietta leavitt is has credited by all the textbooks printed and seen the phrase of leavitts law but there is the linear relationship and its considered the discovery of essentially the scale of the universe out to the local group and a little bit beyond. A local group being a group of galaxies. Several hundred galaxies. Marauding around the universe together. Let me ask another question here. I believe the curating of the harvard plates actually remained virtually all female enterprise throughout the 20th century and maybe even to this very day. Current curator is a woman. And i believe all curators until now have all been women i believe. At harvard . Yeah. Thereve been many directors and it costs money to run this operation. I know from experience a lot of harvard professors when it comes time to shave off the budget they point to the plates and say what are they doing here . Mrs. Draper not only paid for the work during her lifetime but she provided for the continuation and the preservation of the plates in her will. Part of the money is still coming from her. There havent been very many curators. I think it starts with wilhelm enough Fleming Annie Joe cannon and two others and now on to number five. In this entire lineage that you were looking at its a small number of women. Do we have one more question . I think there is time for two more questions. One in the back. How long sitake to read the plates . For one of the astronomers when they first collect the plates . They were never fully red. The density of information is so great that i dont think anyone felt the day had been completely. Lets say we look at one of the plates that was marked up in great detail. How long would it take to market or a detailed . I dont know that i can answer that. Maybe someone marked it up in 10 years later they said theres an oboe or variable star. They were asked at different times of the same plates might yield 10 answers. Research projects, i dont know that question is answerable. Was at harvard that the plates were used . Mt. Wilson into play default but many people came from europe and spent months at harvard just because of the play collections. Thats why he missed payne came. That was a drop for her and the fact as she is she could have a future and astronomy in this country. We have one there and we will come around to the side. This is a question for lia the artist in the group. If you looked at most of contemporary art the great museums of the world most of the subject matter that artists concentrate on have to do with the visible world that we can see in a terrestrial manner bowls of fruit landscapes and people. What is it that gave rise to the viewpoint towards the terrestrial . And the second part of the question would the is there a connection between the notion of of. A great question. I think when i think about the absolute fundamental question of arts and science the fascination of nature and the desire to replicate it for expanded in some ways of 500 years ago that i give ben a painting of something and now we have advanced technology of the Hubble Space Telescope but i think they are a size than the fascination with this guy but also the horror of the sky. Hundreds of years ago, you didnt know was coming or an eclipse that would produce notions of the supplying terror in many ways. I think the notion of representing the sky that hasnt been in that lineage of our history is in a lot of ways because of the lack of technology and as we get closer to the stars with the newest telescopes or measuring Gravitational Waves we are going to have different entry points on how to represent and get in touch with the objects in the sky. David and i spent the afternoon talking about this. This incredible painting and i think youd be interested. Its dated 1492 but in the sky there is a ufo. They have xrated and no not only ufo but for a long time they thought someone has come back 100 years ago and added a ufo but in the painting theres a figure thats looking and pointing at the sky. So whether theres an idea being visited but i think representing the sky created a lot of mystery and awe. Was there a followup to that that . In ott. I think for me the relationship to the idea of experience and that to me is i think a universal experience and in a lot of ways. One last question up in the front. It was just a question about digitizing of the glass plates. When is that project slated to be finished and will be assessable to the public are part of the archives . It will be accessible to the public. Will be on line. Some of the images already are. A project had a hiccup a year ago when the plates were flooded and all the digitizing equipment was drowned. It has been rebuilt and carrying forward its going on about 10 years. I think they probably need another five or 10, maybe less. Im not sure how quickly they are going now. It makes me wonder, this is wide speculation but to the point about when someone in the Astronomy Department at harvard pointed to three stories of metal cabinets of last plates and what can happen once the archive is complete. Some of the plates have beautiful writing on them and those have been set aside that they are such a small amount that a been set aside to essentially the photographing the covers of photographing annotations in razor and that meant scanning them so someone can go on line and use it as a reference. What the sky was like 100 years ago so it will be necessary to have these physical plates in the future . Would the said they are scraping them they are rooting them for the sake of digitizing them . So they are destroying the original . Not the image but the writing writing. Women would put numbers or other marks on the plates. That have to be washed off. The reason for that is you saw the fasts notation on some of the slides. If you are looking for star and you want to see if there is a novi you can see underneath number one through 2000 whatever. They are scraping up the emulsion side of the photographic image but the side, the opposite side which is where the women would write the notation. Is there some way of digitally looking at it in separating the notation . I dont think to photograph them with the notation. And then they scan them. I know we have to wrap up its interesting the physicality is extremely inspiring. Did digitization and all that is wonderful but you would not abort with your process had it not been their process which really defines your work. Your work is the actual act. She describes it as the light of the star. They are exposed by a start. In my own work the process highlights the history which is essential but i dont know, theres something in the physical link of imagining them. Its not just a romantic notion but again the way we contextualize what historic objects are harvard looks at them as an astronomical archive. If you go to a different part of library a look at annie joe cannons scrapbook of the annie joe cannon but the Astronomy Department doesnt see that. Im hoping david buck david spunt makes everyone so excited about the history that they will never think of scraping another play. You are saying its very important in drawing you to the topic as a writer of the plates. They have retained their value after all this time. How did you discover the project . I was interviewing her and she mentioned the importance of leavitt and her work. I found that whole roomful of women. Yes, they are going to applaud. Be astronomers outside. Please stay and enjoy yourselves and lets thank them again. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the Astronomer Association has feelings right outside so if you want to see what we have to see tonight please go
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