September 24: Charlotte Sitterly

Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly

September 24, 1898 – March 3, 1990

Charlotte Moore Sitterly was an American astronomer.

Charlotte Moore was born in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1920 and went on to Princeton to assist Henry Norris Russell. During this time she worked at the Princeton University Observatory and the Mt. Wilson Observatory. She worked extensively on solar spectroscopy, analyzing the spectral lines of the Sun and thereby identifying the chemical elements in the Sun. She earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1931 from the University of California, Berkeley on a Lick Fellowship, and then returned to Princeton.

During her second stay at Princeton, she met and married Bancroft W. Sitterly, who became a physics professor. She joined the then National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1945. Her tables of atomic spectra and energy levels, published by NBS, have remained essential references in spectroscopy for decades.

Later in her life, it became possible to launch instruments on rockets and she extended her work to the ultraviolet spectral lines.

Sitterly was given the Annie J. Cannon Award (1937), the William F. Meggers Award of the Optical Society of America (1972) and the Bruce Medal (1990).

The asteroid 2110 Moore-Sitterly is named in her honor.

September 11: Mary Watson Whitney

Mary Watson Whitney

September 11, 1847 – January 20, 1921

Mary Watson Whitney was an American astronomer and for 22 years the head of the Vassar Observatory.

Whitney was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1847. She went to school in Waltham and graduated from the public high school in 1863. Afterwards she entered Vassar College, where she met the astronomer Maria Mitchell.

She got her degree in 1868 and returned to Waltham to care for her widowed mother. At that time she worked as a teacher in Auburndale, Massachusetts.

Starting in 1869 she had some courses about quaternions (at Harvard) and celestial mechanics by Benjamin Peirce. She got her masters degree from Vassar in 1872, afterwards she went to Zürich for 3 years. Returning to the U.S. she became a teacher at her hometown high school until she became an assistant of Maria Mitchell in Vassar.

In 1888 she fellowed Mitchell as professor and as director of the observatory there until she retired in 1910 for health reasons. She died in Waltham in 1921.

September 2: Christa McAuliffe

Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe

September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986

Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe née Sharon Christa Corrigan, was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. McAuliffe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970, and a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in 1978. She took a teaching post as a social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire in 1982.

In 1985, McAuliffe was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project, and she was scheduled to become the first teacher in space. As a member of mission STS-51-L, she was planning to conduct experiments and teach two lessons from Space Shuttle Challenger. On January 28, 1986, her spacecraft disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, and she was one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. After her death, schools and scholarships were named in her honor, and in 2004 she was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

—Christa McAuliffe, 1985

McAuliffe's remains were buried at Blossom Hill Cemetery in Concord, NH. She has since been honored at many events, including the Daytona 500 auto race in 1986. The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium/McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord and the Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Center for Education and Teaching Excellence at Framingham State College are named in her memory, as are the asteroid 3352 McAuliffe, the crater McAuliffe on the Moon, and a crater on the planet Venus, which was named McAuliffe by the Soviet Union. Approximately 40 schools around the world have been named after her, including the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

August 1: Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell

August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889

Maria Mitchell was an American astronomer, born on Nantucket island, off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her father, William Mitchell, taught both his sons and daughters astronomy and celestial navigation and her mother, Lydia Coleman, encouraged her daughters to learn occupations and seek independence.

Maria Mitchell, the first woman astronomer in the United States, discovered a comet which was referred to as "Miss Mitchell's Comet".

October 1, 1847, was a clear night. Maria Mitchell was at her telescope on the roof of her parent’s house observing a star. She had slipped away from the party going on downstairs to sweep the heavens. As she focused on one particular star it occurred to her that this fuzzy star was actually a comet. She returned to the parlor to tell her father what she had found. Mr. Mitchell ran upstairs to the telescope and located the fuzzy object. He immediately declared it to be a comet. The next day Mr. Mitchell wrote to Professor Bond, at Cambridge, announcing the discovery. Discovering comets wasn’t unusual during this time but the only other woman to have discovered one was Caroline Herschel. The comet was named 1847 VI (modern designation is C/1847 T1) but it became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.”

In 1832 King Frederick VI of Denmark offered a gold medal prize to each person who “first” discovered a comet using a telescope. There was some initial confusion as Francesco de Vico also discovered this comet two days after Miss Mitchell but had reported it first. The confusion was resolved and Miss Mitchell was awarded the prize and the worldwide fame that came along with it.

She also studied sunspots, planets and nebulae.

Mitchell was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the first woman Professor of Astronomy in the United States (at Vassar College). In 1875 Mitchell was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Women where she promoted higher education and suffrage for women. After her death, the Maria Mitchell Astronomical Society was created in her honor.

In 1902, the Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) was founded. It brings the legacy of the Nantucket astronomer to new generations. In 1905 Mitchell was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. The house on Nantucket where Maria was born is open to the public during the summer.

The Lunar crater Mitchell is named in her honor.

July 23: Vera Rubin

Vera (Cooper) Rubin

July 23, 1928

Vera Rubin is an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. Her opus magnus was the uncovering of the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomena became known as the galaxy rotation problem.

Currently, the theory of dark matter is the most popular candidate for explaining this. The alternative theory of MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) has little support in the community.

After she earned an A.B. from Vassar College (1948) she tried to enroll at Princeton but never received their graduate catalog as women there were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program until 1975. She applied to Cornell University, where she studied physics under Philip Morrison, Richard Feynman, and Hans Bethe. There she earned a M.A. in 1951. Then in 1954 at Georgetown University she earned a Ph.D.

Vera Rubin also has honorary Doctors of Science degrees from numerous universities, including Harvard and Yale. Rubin is currently a research astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. So far she has co-authored 114 peer reviewed research papers.

She is the author of Bright Galaxies Dark Matters.

Rubin received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1996. She was only the second female recipient of this medal, the first being Caroline Herschel in 1828.

The asteroid 5726 Rubin is named in her honor.

July 5: Louise Freeland Jenkins

Louise Freeland Jenkins

July 5, 1888 – May 9, 1970

Louise Jenkins was an American astronomer.

She was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In 1911 she graduated from Mount Holyoke College, then she received a Master's degree in astronomy in 1917 from the same institution. From 1913 to 1915 she worked at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh.

About 1921 she moved to Japan, becoming a teacher at the Women's Christian College, a missionary school. She returned to the United States in 1925 after her father died. A year later she returned to teach at a school in Himeji. (Hinomoto Gakuen girl's high school.)

In 1932 she returned to the US and became a staff member at Yale University Observatory. She was co-editor of the Astronomical Journal starting in 1942, and continued in this post until 1958. She would return to visit Japan later in her life.

She was noted for her research into the trigonometric parallax of nearby stars. She also studied variable stars.

The crater Jenkins on the Moon is named in her honor.

July 4: Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer and the deaf daughter of a Congregational minister. A graduate of Radcliffe College, Leavitt went to work in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory in a menial capacity as a "computer", assigned to count images on photographic plates. Study of the plates led Leavitt to propound a groundbreaking theory, worked out while she labored as a $10.50-a-week assistant, that was the basis for the pivotal work of astronomer Edwin Hubble and radically changed the theory of modern astronomy, an accomplishment for which Leavitt received almost no credit during her lifetime.

Leavitt began work in 1893 at Harvard College Observatory as one of the women human "computers" brought in by Edward Charles Pickering to measure and catalog the brightness of stars in the observatory's photographic plate collection. (In the early 1900s, women were not allowed to operate telescopes). She noted thousands of variable stars in images of the Magellanic Clouds. In 1908 she published her results in the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, noting that a few of the variables showed a pattern: brighter ones appeared to have longer periods. After further study, she confirmed in 1912 that the variable stars of greater intrinsic luminosity – actually Cepheid variables – did indeed have longer periods, and the relationship was quite close and predictable.

Leavitt's discovery is known as 'Period-luminosity relationship.' "A straight line can be readily drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima," Leavitt wrote of her study of 1,777 variable stars recorded on Harvard's photographic plates, "thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variable and their periods."

This relationship provided an important yardstick for measuring distances in the Universe, if it could be calibrated. One year after Leavitt reported her results, Ejnar Hertzsprung determined the distance of several Cepheids in the Milky Way, and with this calibration the distance to any Cepheid could be determined.

At the time, it was not clear that millions of (what we now call) galaxies were actually outside of the Milky Way. Their distance could not be measured until a tool existed. Cepheids were soon detected in other galaxies such as the Andromeda Galaxy (notably by Edwin Hubble in 1923–24). Cepheids were an important part of the evidence that galaxies are far outside of the Milky Way. Our picture of the universe was changed forever, largely because of Leavitt's discovery.

The accomplishments of Edwin Hubble, renowned American astronomer, were made possible by Leavitt's groundbreaking research and Leavitt's Law.

"If Henrietta Leavitt had provided the key to determine the size of the cosmos, then it was Edwin Hubble who inserted it in the lock and provided the observations that allowed it to be turned",

write David H. and Matthew D.H. Clark in their book Measuring the Cosmos. Hubble himself often said that Leavitt deserved the Nobel for her work.

Leavitt worked sporadically during her time at Harvard, often sidelined by health problems and family obligations. But by 1921, when Harlow Shapley took over as director of the observatory, Leavitt was made head of stellar photometry. By the end of that year she had succumbed to cancer, and was buried in the family plot at Cambridge Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The asteroid 5383 Leavitt and the crater Leavitt on the Moon are named in her honor.

June 3: Adelaide Ames

Wilson, Adelaide Ames and Cecilia Payne at Harvard in 1924

Adelaide Ames

June 3, 1900 - 1932

Adelaide Ames was an American astronomer. In 1932 Harlow Shapley and Adelaide Ames introduced the Shapley-Ames Catalog that showed the distributions of galaxies brighter than 13th magnitude to be quite different north and south of the plane of the Galaxy. Their study was the first to indicate that the universe might contain substantial regions that departed from the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy.

Ames graduated from Vassar College in 1922. She began work at the Harvard College Observatory while studying at Radcliffe. After earning her Master’s degree in 1924, she worked with Shapley on a photometric survey of the brighter spiral nebulae. The condensations in the spiral arms led them to conclude that the nebulae were likely at great distances. She and Shapley went on to make a catalogue of the positions, angular dimensions, classification, and integrated magnitudes of more than two thousand nebulae, mostly in the Coma-Virgo “cloud.” They concluded that the system “apparently lies at a distance of more than ten million light years, is two million light years in diameter, and is composed of nearly three hundred individual systems” and that there were five or six super-systems of various sizes and at different distances.

After her accidental drowning in 1932, Shapley wrote: 

"In the field of external galaxies she had at the age of thirty one attained an international reputation which was recognized by appointment to the International Committee on Clusters and Nebulae".

Miss Ames was an active participant in the administrative problems of the Observatory and at the time of her death was in general charge of arrangements for the entertainment of the International Astronomical Union at its Cambridge meeting.

May 17: Mary Adela Blagg

Memorial to Blagg in her hometown.

Mary Adela Blagg

May 17, 1858 – April 14, 1944

Mary Blagg was an English astronomer.

She was born in Cheadle, Staffordshire, and lived her entire life in that locale. Mary was the daughter of a solicitor, John Charles Blagg, and France Caroline Foottit. She trained herself in mathematics by reading her brother's textbooks. In 1875 she was sent to a finishing school in Kensington. There she studied algebra and German. She later worked as a sunday school teacher and was the branch secretary of the "Girls' Friendly Society".

By middle age she became interested in astronomy after attending a university extension course, taught by Mr. J. A. Hardcastle. Her tutor suggested working in the area of selenography, particularly on the problem of developing a uniform system of lunar nomenclature. (Several major lunar maps of the period had significant discrepancies in terms of naming the various features.)

In 1905 she was appointed by the newly-formed International Association of Academies to build a collated list of all of the lunar features. She worked with Mr S. A. Saunder on this very tedious and lengthy task, and the result was published in 1913. Her work produced a long list of discrepancies that the association would need to resolve. She also performed considerable work on the subject of variable stars, in collaboration with Professor H. H. Turner. These were published in a series of ten articles in the Monthly Notices, in which the Professor admitted that the large majority of the work had been performed by Mary Blagg.

After the publication of several research papers for the Royal Astronomical Society, she was elected as a fellow in 1916, after being nominated by Professor Turner. She was the first woman to be allowed entry into that society.

In 1920, she joined the Lunar Commission of the newly formed International Astronomical Union. They tasked her with continuing her work on standardizing the nomenclature. For this task she collaborated with Karl Müller (1866-1942) of Vienna, a retired government official and amateur astronomer. (The crater Müller on the Moon was subsequently named after him.) Together they produced a two volume set in 1935, titled Named Lunar Formations, that became the standard reference on the subject.

During her life she performed volunteer work, including caring for Belgian refugee children during World War I. One of her favorite hobbies was chess. She was described in her obituary as being of "modest and retiring disposition, in fact very much of a recluse", and rarely attended meetings.

The crater Blagg on the Moon is named in her honor.

April 14: Annie Russell Maunder

The original butterfly diagram drawn by Walter Maunder and Annie S. D. Maunder in 1904

 has been on display for some time at the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado.

Annie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell

April 14, 1868 – September 15, 1947

Annie Maunder was a British astronomer and mathematician.

Annie received her secondary education at the Ladies Collegiate School in Belfast. Winning a prize in an 1886 internediate school examination, she was able to sit the Girton open entrance scholarship examination, and was awarded a three year scholarship. She studied at Cambridge University (Girton College) and in 1889 she passed the degree examinations with honors, as the top mathematician of her year at Girton, and ranked Senior Optime in the university class list. However the restrictions of the period did not allow her to receive the B.A. she had otherwise earned.

In 1891 she began work at the Greenwich Royal Observatory, serving as one of the "lady computers" assigned to the solar department. There she assisted E. Walter Maunder, and she spent much time photographing the Sun and tracking the movements of sunspots. (The solar maximum was in 1894.) The two were married in 1895, his second marriage, and Annie was required to resign from her job. However the two continued to collaborate, with Annie accompanied Walter on solar eclipse expeditions.

She published "The Heavens and their Story" in 1910, with he husband as the co-author. (She was credited by her husband as the primary author.) In 1916 she became the first woman elected to the Royal Astronomical Society. The investigations of the couple demonstrated a correlation between the variation in sunspot numbers and the climate of the Earth, leading to the discovery that the decrease period of solar activity during the Maunder Minimum likely resulted in the "little ice age".

Walter and Annie did not have any children, although he had five children from his previous marriage. Walter died in 1928, and she died in London, England in 1947.

The Lunar crater Maunder was co-named for Walter and Annie Maunder.

March 21: Antonia Maury

Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury
March 21, 1866 – January 8, 1952

Antonia Maury was an American astronomer who worked at Harvard College Observatory (HCO) along with Williamina Fleming and Annie Jump Cannon. She published an important early catalog of stellar spectra.

Maury was the granddaughter of John William Draper and niece of Henry Draper, both pioneering astronomers. In 1840 her grandfather had made the first daguerreotype image of the moon, while in 1872 her uncle made the first photograph of a star, Vega, showing absorption lines—dark lines in the star's spectrum caused by the absorption of hot gases as they cool. On her father's side, Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, the first director of the United States Naval Observatory (1842-61), was an astronomer and oceanographer, known as the "Pathfinder of the Seas".

Antonia Maury was educated at Vassar College, graduating in 1887. She was employed at Harvard College Observatory (HCO), where she observed stellar spectra and published a catalog of classifications in 1897 (Spectra of Bright Stars Photographed with the 11-inch Draper Telescope as part of the Henry Draper Memorial, Annals of Harvard College Observatory, vol. 28, pp.1-128).

Antonia Maury's uncle, Henry Draper, had devoted great time and effort to the study of stellar spectra, and he was in the process of cataloging over 100 stars through spectral analysis when he died, in 1882, at the age of 45. Three years later Edward Charles Pickering and Williamina Fleming had begun the monumental task at the Harvard College Observatory of cataloging, according to a color index they had devised, the prismatic spectra of some 10,000 stars.

In 1886, Maury's aunt, Anna Draper, who had worked with her husband on his catalog, had established the Henry Draper Memorial to fund it. Antonia Maury was the "computer" responsible for computing and cataloging stellar spectra for bright stars in the northern hemisphere, which entailed analyzing thousands of spectral photographs for minute differences. The average pay for the "computers"—sometimes referred to as "Pickering's Harem"—was 25 cents an hour, less than half the amount paid to men.

The director of HCO at the time, Pickering, disagreed with Maury’s system of classification and explanation of differing line widths, prompting her to leave HCO. However, Ejnar Hertzsprung realized the value of her classifications and used them in his system of identifying giant and dwarf stars.

Maury's efforts to refine the spectral categories were not appreciated. Doing original theoretical work not only conflicted with Pickering's expectations for her as a "computer," but they also slowed down the work on the Draper Catalogue. Her detailed measurements of width and sharpness put him behind schedule. "She was one of the most original thinkers of all the women Pickering employed", Hoffleit notes, "but instead of encouraging her attempts at interpreting observations, he was only irritated by her independence and departure from assigned and expected routine." Frustrated by this constriction of her work, Antonia Maury left Harvard in 1891 to teach in the Gilman School in Cambridge.

In 1908, Maury returned to HCO where she remained for many years. Her most famous work there was the spectroscopic analysis of the binary star Beta Lyrae, published in 1933 (The Spectral Changes of Beta Lyrae, Annals of Harvard College Observatory, vol. 84, no. 8).

Antonia Maury, surveying the vastness of the known universe, once observed

"but the human brain is greater yet, because it can comprehend it all."

In 1943, Antonia Maury was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society. The lunar crater Maury is co-named after her and Matthew Fontaine Maury.

March 16: Caroline Lucretia Herschel

Caroline Lucretia Herschel

March 16, 1750 – January 9, 1848

Caroline Herschel was a German-born English astronomer, the sister of astronomer Sir William Herschel with whom she worked throughout both of their careers. Her most significant contribution to astronomy was the discovery of several comets and in particular the periodic comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, which bears her name.

William's interest in astronomy started as a hobby to pass time at night. He took to retiring to bed as soon as he arrived home, taking "a bason of milk" and an astronomy book for company. At breakfast the next day he would give an impromptu lecture on what he had learned the night before. Caroline became as interested as William, stating that she was "much hindered in my practice by my help being continually wanted in the execution of the various astronomical contrivances." William became known for his work on high performance telescopes, and Caroline found herself supporting his efforts.

William's telescopes gained the attention of many in the field. When comparing observations with the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, William's telescope proved far superior. In March 1781 he made his first observation of what would eventually prove to be the planet Uranus. In 1782, William accepted the office of King's Astronomer to George III and moved to Datchet and subsequently to Observatory House near Slough, Berkshire. The new job proved to be a mixed blessing; although it left him with ample free time to continue his astronomical observations, it also meant a reduction in income and being called upon by the king for entertainment at any time. During this time William perfected his telescope making, building a series of ever larger devices that ultimately ended with his famous 40-foot focal length instrument. Caroline was his constant assistant in his observations, also performing the laborious calculations with which they were connected. During one such observation run on the large telescope in 1783, Caroline became caught on an iron hook and when she was helped off "...they could not lift me without leaving nearly 2 ouches of my flesh behind."

In 1778 William married a rich widow. Although his new wife made every effort to stay on friendly terms with Caroline it seems her life was considerably upset. Through this period she continued her observations on her own, and made many of her discoveries. She later reconciled with the couple, and took great delight in her new nephew, John Herschel.

During her leisure hours she occupied herself with sweeping the heavens with a 27-inch focal length Newtonian telescope and by this means detected a number of astronomical objects during the years 1783 - 87, including most notably an independent discovery of M110 (NGC 205), the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. During 1786 - 97 she also discovered eight comets, her first comet being discovered on August 1, 1786. She had unquestioned priority on five of the comets and had rediscovered Comet Encke in 1795. The following year she was granted an annual salary of £50 by George III for her work as William's assistant.

In 1797 William's observations had shown that there were a great many discrepancies in the star catalogue published by John Flamsteed, which was difficult to use due to its having been published as two volumes, the catalogue proper and a volume of original observations. William realised that he needed a proper cross-index in order to properly explore these differences but was reluctant to devote time to it at the expense of his more interesting astronomical activities. He therefore recommended to Caroline that she undertake the task. The resulting Catalogue of Stars was published by the Royal Society in 1798 and contained an index of every observation of every star made by Flamsteed, a list of errata, and a list of more than 560 stars that had not been included.

Caroline returned to Hanover in 1822 following her brother's death, but did not abandon her astronomical studies, continuing to verify and confirm William's findings and producing a catalogue of nebulae to assist John in his work.

In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society presented her with their Gold Medal for this work - no woman would be awarded it again until Vera Rubin in 1996.

In 1835, along with Mary Somerville, she was elected to honorary membership of the Royal Astronomical Society; they were the first honorary women members. In 1838 she was also elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1846 at the age of 96, she was awarded the Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia.

February 1: Laurel Clark

Laurel Blair Salton Clark

March 10, 1961 – February 1, 2003

Laurel Clark was a medical doctor, United States Navy Captain, NASA astronaut and Space Shuttle mission specialist who was killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Clark underwent six months of aeromedical training at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute in Pensacola, Florida and was designated as a Naval Flight Surgeon. She was stationed at MCAS Yuma, Arizona and assigned as Flight Surgeon for a Marine Corps AV-8B Night Attack Harrier Squadron (VMA 211). She made several deployments, including one overseas to the Western Pacific, practiced medicine in austere environments, and flew on multiple aircraft. Her squadron won the Marine Attack Squadron of the year for its successful deployment. She was then assigned as the Group Flight Surgeon for the Marine Aircraft Group (MAG 13).

Before her selection as an astronaut candidate she served as a Flight Surgeon for the Naval Flight Officer advanced training squadron (VT-86) in Pensacola, Florida. Clark was Board Certified by the National Board of Medical Examiners and held a Wisconsin Medical License. Her military qualifications included Radiation Health Officer, Undersea Medical Officer, Diving Medical Officer, Submarine Medical Officer, and Naval Flight Surgeon. She was a Basic Life Support Instructor, Advanced Cardiac Life Support Provider, Advanced Trauma Life Support Provider, and Hyperbaric Chamber Advisor.

Selected by NASA in April 1996, Clark reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. After completing two years of training and evaluation, she was qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. From July 1997 to August 2000 Clark worked in the Astronaut Office Payloads/Habitability Branch. Clark flew aboard STS-107, logging 15 days, 22 hours, and 20 minutes in space.

STS-107 Columbia – The 16-day flight was a dedicated science and research mission. Working 24 hours a day, in two alternating shifts, the crew successfully conducted approximately 80 experiments. Clark's bioscience experiments included gardening in space, as she discussed only days before her death in an interview with Milwaukee media near her Wisconsin hometown. The STS-107 mission ended abruptly on February 1, 2003, when Columbia and her crew perished during re-entry, 16 minutes before scheduled landing.

Life continues in lots of places -- and life is a magical thing.

—Laurel Clark, in reference to her rose bushes.

Tributes

• Asteroid 51827 Laurelclark was named for Clark.
  
• Clark Hill in the Columbia Hills on Mars was named for Clark
  
• Clark Hall, in the Columbia Village apartments, at the Florida Institute of Technology is named after her.
  
• Dr. Laurel Salton Clark Memorial Fountain, in Racine, WI
  
• Laurel B. Clark and David M. Brown Aerospace Medicine Academic Center, located at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute
  

January 28: Johannes Hevelius

Johannes Hevelius

January 28, 1611 – January 28, 1687

Johannes Hevelius (Latin), also called Jan Heweliusz (in Polish), was a Polish astronomer. He gained the reputation of "the founder of lunar topography" and invented ten new constellations, seven of which are still recognized by astronomers (Canes Venatici, Lacerta, Leo Minor, Lynx, Scutum, Sextans and Vulpecula).

In 1641 he built an observatory on the roofs of his three connected houses, equipping it with splendid instruments, including ultimately a tubeless telescope of 45 m (150 ft) focal length, constructed by himself.

In May 1679, the young Englishman Edmund Halley visited Hevelius as emissary of the Royal Society. Halley had been instructed by Robert Hooke and John Flamsteed to persuade Hevelius to use telescopes, yet Hevelius demonstrated that he could do well with only quadrant and alidade. He is thus considered the last astronomer to do major work without lenses.

Hevelius made observations of sunspots, 1642–1645, devoted four years to charting the lunar surface, discovered the Moon's libration in longitude, and published his results in Selenographia, sive Lunae descriptio (1647), a work which entitles him to be called "the founder of lunar topography."

He discovered four comets, in 1652, 1661 (probably Ikeya-Zhang), 1672 and 1677. These discoveries led to his thesis that such bodies revolve around the Sun in parabolic paths.

Katharine, his first wife, died in 1662, and a year later Hevelius married Elisabeth Koopmann, the young daughter of a merchant family. The couple had four children. Elisabeth supported him, published two of his works after his death, and is considered the first female astronomer and called "the mother of moon charts". Her life was recently novelized as The Star Huntress (2006).

The Lunar crater Hevelius is named in his honor.

Janaury 20: Agnes Mary Clerke

Agnes Mary Clerke

February 10, 1842 – January 20, 1907

Agnes Mary Clerke was an astronomer and writer, mainly in the field of astronomy. She was interested in astronomy from an early age, and had begun to write about it before the age of 15. Her first important article, Copernicus in Italy, was published in the Edinburgh Review in October 1877. She achieved a world-wide reputation in 1885, on the appearance of her exhaustive treatise, A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century. Clerke was not a practical astronomer, instead collating, interpreting and summarising the results of astronomical research. In 1888 she spent three months at the Cape Observatory as the guest of the director, Sir David Gill, and his wife, and there became sufficiently familiar with spectroscopic work to be enabled to write about this newer branch of the science with increased clearness and confidence.

As a member of the British Astronomical Association she attended its meetings regularly, as well as those of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1903, with Lady Huggins, she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, a rank previously held only by two other women, Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville.

Her sister, Ellen Mary Clerke (1840–1906), also wrote about astronomy. The Lunar crater Clerke is named in her honor.