Astronomer Antonia Maury was born #OTD in 1866. She devised an entirely new stellar classification system that accounted for the strength and width of spectral lines, and conducted spectroscopic studies of binary stars. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 Image: Vassar College senior year photograph - ThreadSky

mcnees.bsky.social • 20 days ago

Astronomer Antonia Maury was born #OTD in 1866. She devised an entirely new stellar classification system that accounted for the strength and width of spectral lines, and conducted spectroscopic studies of binary stars. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

Image: Vassar College senior year photograph

Comments

malmeida.bsky.social•20 days ago

Alma mater name-drop w00t

mcnees.bsky.social•20 days ago

Maury graduated from Vassar in 1887 with honors in physics, astronomy, and philosophy. The following year she was hired by Harvard Observatory director Edward Pickering to work as a “computer,” classifying stars according to their spectra. (2/n)

mcnees.bsky.social•20 days ago

They did not get along. Maury was supposed to use the Harvard Classification Scheme developed by Pickering and Annie Jump Cannon, which grew out of earlier work by Pickering and Williamina Fleming. But she had her own ideas.(3/n)

mcnees.bsky.social•20 days ago

Maury wanted to scrutinize details of the spectra not accounted for in those early systems. She grouped stars into 22 categories, instead of the 7 used by Pickering and Cannon. In each category she further grouped stars by the strength and width of their spectral lines. (4/n)

mcnees.bsky.social•20 days ago

Pickering did not like this. He expected Maury to compute what she was told.

But he had no problem taking credit for her work. In 1889 Maury discovered the binary star Beta Aurigae, using spectroscopic techniques. Pickering presented and published the discovery, mentioning Maury only briefly. (5/n)

mcnees.bsky.social•20 days ago

Fed up with Pickering, Maury left the Harvard Observatory in 1891 and took a teaching position at a school in Cambridge.(6/n)

mcnees.bsky.social•20 days ago

She returned in 1893 and 1895 to complete her classification work, and in 1897 published "Spectra of Bright Stars Photographed with the 11-inch Draper Telescope as part of the Henry Draper Memorial” with Pickering.

It used her classification system. (7/n)
https://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1897AnHar..28....1M&classic=YES

beamjockey.bsky.social•19 days ago

Seeing the surname, I wondered "was Antonia Maury any relation to the oceanographer Matthew Maury?"

The answer is yes, and also to astronomers Henry and Mary Anna Draper.

I learned from Antonia's Wikipedia article that she was a cousin of Matthew—but Matthew's article does not (yet) mention her.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply