Silent Sky: The Story of Revolutionary Women in Science

Every year, my theater department competes in the One Act Competition. One Act is, quite literally, a one act play. Each school performs their play for 55 minutes or less and must start and end with a blank stage. Including this year, my school has won the regional competition and competed at state for 10 years in a row! This year, we performed a very powerful story about a woman making steps in science called “Silent Sky”.

The story follows Henrietta Leavitt, a real woman who lived between the late 1800s and early 1900s. She, along with her colleges, Annie Cannon and Williamina Fleming, worked as “computers” at Harvard Observatory under Dr. Pickering. Their job was to analyze plates of stars from a telescope, making grand discoveries along the way. During this time, it was common for women to work behind the scenes as the men got credit for their discoveries. Yet, these women moved up in their positions and fought for their rights.

At Harvard Observatory, Henrietta Leavitt was the head of the photographic stellar photometry department. The most important of Levitt’s discoveries was the Cephid variables. She learned that the stars were not blinking randomly but with pattern. Her work would later be used by Edwin Hubble to determine the distance of the nebula in Andromeda. This was the first measurement of distance outside our galaxy, and it would not have been possible without Levitt’s work. Not to mention, she was also severely hearing impaired.

Previously a maid of Dr. Pickering, Williamina Fleming helped create the Harvard “Computers” group of women. Fleming discovered 59 gaseous nebula, 310 variable stars, and 10 novae. This includes her most famous discovery, the Horsehead Nebula.

Annie Cannon worked on the Henry Draper Catalog where classified stars. She is credited with creating the first system to classify stars, OBAFGKM. In her lifetime, Cannon classified 350,000 stars! Cannon also fought for women’s rights as a part of the National Women’s Party. Just as Henrietta was partially deaf, Cannon was as well.

As someone considering a career in aerospace, their work with stars is very inspiring to me. Despite living at a time when women did not have many rights or opportunities, their work greatly increased our knowledge of the universe. They showed us that it is possible to make great accomplishments if we set our minds to it, even when great obstacles lie in our path. Our generation owes much to these and the many women like them who paved the way for us. There is still lots of work to be done, but if we keep the mindset these ladies had, the sky is the limit.