| 內容簡介 | Shares the story of the scientific contributions of a group of women working at the Harvard College Observatory from the late 1800s through the mid-twentieth century, tracing their collection of star observations captured nightly on glass photographic plates.;"In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying images of the stars captured on glass photographic plates. They made extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim, helping discern what the starts were made of, dividing them into categories for further research, and even finding a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, 'The Glass Universe' is the hidden history of a group of remarkable women whose astronomical breakthroughs forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe."--Back cover of paperback. |