We have the wide our universe used to, it's easy to forget, how little we knew its scope until 1900. Astronomers have not even a reliable scale for measuring distances in the universe, to an obscure female astronomer a breakthrough discovery in the comb made by photographic plates with snapshots of the stars in the night sky.
This discovery provides the main storyline for silent sky, a new game is now making its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California. Written by Lauren Gunderson, it is based on the life of Henrietta Leavitt: the woman who found to measure such as to the universe.
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Henrietta Leavitt was born Massachusetts 1868 in Cambridge, the daughter of the Congressional Minister, came from a long line of New England Puritans.
She attended both Oberlin College and Radcliffe College visits, although they discover not astronomy until their last year. A disease that mostly deaf left her away from her for several years, but their love for the stars remained unbroken. She began volunteer work in Harvard College Observatory, just to be close to their passion.
The Director of the Observatory at the time of Charles Pickering, had become frustrated on the less than stellar work of his male assistants, if there are the pictures of stars on photographic plates. It was tedious work, perhaps by young male astronomers disliked.
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Pickering declared famous his housekeeper could do better. And so he brought his housekeeper, Williamina Fleming to prove it. You disappoint Fleming is in fact the classifications in the Draper Catalogue of stellar spectra, tackles first published in 1890 to.
Pickering soon accumulated a whole team of female astronomical "computer" - "Pickering's harem" - including Annie Jump Cannon synchronized. Leavitt joined their ranks officially in 1902 at a salary of 30 cents an hour.
Not Leavitt was technically given the prejudice against women in science at the time, should true research, or even the telescope use. But like Leavitt diligently about the plates heated, she began increasingly Cepheid variables in the small Magellanic Wolke--a kind of in regular intervals pulsating star once believed that quite rare to see. You personally discovered about half of all, more than 2400 variable stars, the famous during their day.
But Leavitt's biggest claim astronomical famous is known as the "period-luminosity relationship." She studied in 1777 variable stars, and found out that the total amount of radiation, which is a Cepheid variable in a second (its brightness) is the length of time between pulses (period influence of pulsation) to IBAN - that is, if it took how long know for the star of bright dimmt go, this would tell you how bright it was actually.
And once you knew you had a much better way to measure the distance. Prior to Leavitt's discovery, astronomers to determine distances of stars to 100 light years from Earth were limited; After light years increased this area to 10 million. Their work was based on the Ejnar Hertzsprung plot of the distance of stars, and for Edwin Hubble determination of the age of the universe, for example. Unfortunately Leavitt died of cancer in December 1921, shortly after was promoted to the head of stellar photometry.
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This is the second game with wife penned by Gunderson. She wrote also Emilie: La marquise du Chatelet defends her life, based on 18 mathematician (and mistress of Voltaire) Emilie du Chatelet, the 2009 SCR premiered.
Leavitt's life was far less dramatic than du Chatelet. An obituary by their colleagues, Solon Bailey, describes their devotion to her family and "Sense of duty, justice and loyalty..." "For light amusements she care little." There is not much is required to defend that, but Gunderson weaves a compelling story of this quiet life yet.
Sure, there are some historical freedoms, in particular the addition of love interest: one with the name of Peter Shaw, who really is as recognizes exceptional Henrietta (fictional) astronomer. It is the merit of Gunderson's, which as well the passion had portrayed it Leavitt for the sky, and consume their want to finally "know where we are in the universe." (One of the highlights is the moment when Leavitt that finds out the pattern of this vibrant Cepheids in the listen to her sister play the piano.) Gunderson begins also the dilemma of the limited ways highly intelligent women of that era, especially the frustration of Leavitt must have felt to not fully in the scientific questions which they loved so much.
Pickering as Director of the Harvard Observatory, said Hubble often said Leavitt actually deserves the Nobel Prize for their work, and G?sta Mittag-Leffler of the Swedish Academy of Sciences on Harlow Shapley, begin the paperwork for their nomination has succeeded in 1924. He was tormented by her death three years earlier, to learn, made it not for the Nobel Prize.
(Shapley, in a less than noble moment which had cheek, in his answer suggest that he the credit which is to receive their results for the interpretation.) To its credit, Mittag-Leffler; fall for it (Shapley never won the Nobel Prize either.)
"Found no diary recording, what it was about the stars that moved you," wrote George Johnson in his biography of 2005, Miss Leavitt rated stars: the untold story of the woman who discovered how to measure the universe to. "One of the story of small players, their history has been allowed by the cracks glide...." Luckily for us Lauren Gunderson Henrietta Leavitt brings vividly to life and lets us catch a glimpse of a truly remarkable woman that better as still earned the lost in obscurity.
Silent sky leads by 1 May 2011. You can find performance times and ticket information here.
Photos: (top) Colette Kilroy as Annie Jump Cannon, Amelia white as Willamina Fleming and Monette Magrath as Henrietta Leavitt in South Coast Repertory 2011 world premiere of silent sky. Credit: South Coast Repertory. (Mid) "Pickering's harem" by the Harvard College Observatory, to 1900-1910. credit: grasslands Observatory on Wikimedia Commons. (bottom) Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Source: American Institute of physics, Emilio Segrè Visual archives
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