A century ago, Henrietta Leavitt made one of the most important astronomical discoveries ever. She had earned a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in 1892, then worked for a decade as a volunteer at the Harvard College Observatory before being hired in 1902 to identify variable stars on photographs in the growing Harvard photographic plate collection. Even though she had managed to publish a paper under her own name in 1908, her data reporting what astronomers now call the period-luminosity (P-L) relationship for Cepheid variable stars were published in 1912 under the name of the director of the Harvard College Observatory, Edward Pickering. He was kind enough to acknowledge her contributions in the first sentence of the paper, writing “the following paper has been prepared by Miss Leavitt.” Notably, he did not write “all of the work presented herein is solely to the credit of Miss Leavitt.” History, however, bears witness to Leavitt as the scientist behind this work
From SpaceSpin.com:
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy.
And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
The star goes by the inauspicious name of Hubble variable number one, or V1
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Edwin Hubble found a star in Andromeda that brightened and faded in a predictable pattern, like a lighthouse beacon, and identified it as V1, a Cepheid variable. This special type of star had already been proven to be a reliable distance marker within our galaxy.
The star helped Hubble show that Andromeda was beyond our galaxy and settled the debate over the status of the spiral nebulae. The universe became a much bigger place after Hubble's discovery, much to the dismay of astronomer Harlow Shapley, who believed the fuzzy nebulae were part of our Milky Way.
Nearly 90 years later, V1 is in the spotlight again. Astronomers pointed Edwin Hubble's namesake, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, at the star once again, in a symbolic tribute to the legendary astronomer's milestone observation.
Astronomers with the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubble Heritage Project partnered with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) to study the star. AAVSO observers followed V1 for six months, producing a plot, or light curve, of the rhythmic rise and fall of the star's light. Based on this light curve, the Hubble Heritage team scheduled telescope time to capture images of the star.
Image of the plotting of V1: click to enlarge. High-res version.
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