Good morning everyone,

Excellent news – the Observatory in Greenwich is opening for active use again! And the telescope they have, the Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope, is very obviously named after a woman. There have been some great women astronomers and I hope you look forward to reading about them today.

Let’s start with Annie Maunder, it is after all her telescope that kicked this Fem Fri off. There’s a crater on the moon named after her as well!

Annie Maunder was eventually made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1916, 24 years after first being proposed. Annie Maunder’s groundbreaking achievements in the sphere of astronomy, particularly solar observation, were remarkable for the time. Along with her husband the Maunders are also well known for the butterfly diagram, which shows how the number of sunspots varies with time, and the Maunder Minimum, a period in the 17th Century when sunspots all but disappeared. Much of their work still holds true today.

https://www.transceltic.com/blog/annie-maunder-pioneer-of-solar-astronomy-be-remembered-150th-anniversary-celebrations

Obviously Caroline Herschel is going to feature if we are talking about the women of astronomy. Here’s Sherry Suyu, a female astronomer from the modern age, talking about her work and contribution. I also see from the sidebar of this article that the Max Planck Institute have done a whole interview series of their current female scientists talking about their favourite female scientists from the past. This looks brilliant. Anyway, back to Caroline Herschel:

Initially, Caroline trained as a singer but she more and more began to collaborate with William on his astronomical work, for example, in his endeavour to build larger and better reflecting telescopes. The grinding and polishing of mirrors were very gruelling work, and a session could even go on for some 16 hours, nonstop […] After a while, she made her own “sky-sweeping” surveys independently and discovered nebulae and comets. In 1796, she was given an annual salary of £50 by King George III for her role as assistant to William, making her the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science.

https://www.mpg.de/female-pioneers-of-science/caroline-herschel

Here’s a woman who has made an amazing contribution to astronomy and is still alive: Carolyn Shoemaker. No other astronomer has more comets named after them than she does. She also makes astronomy in general sound like an incredibly joyful thing:

Her passion for her work sustains her through the long nights of tedium and painstaking work, combing through exposed films. "My real love for the night skies developed while observing at Palomar Observatory in California, and that love has never diminished." Carolyn Shoemaker has spoken about her feelings when she finds the latest comet, "I want to dance."

https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/people/carolyn-shoemaker

Happy Friday!

Alex.