AST 113: Modern Astronomy: October 2015

Adam Bruns

Astronomy 113

Dr. Plavchan

October 8, 2015

The Brilliant Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin

Propose an unsure conclusion about something that has been the standard since ancient times. Then watch as your career begins to fold at the edges and your colleagues begin to judge your work, while it has merit and is wonderfully done, they disagree with the findings that you state are true. Only to find that several years later, a colleague performs his own study regarding yours, through his own experiments figures out that you had been right all along. Thus was the early career of Cecelia Payne, later Cecelia Gaposchkin. A brilliant woman by her own right, determined and curious and only through a moment of hesitant questioning of her own discovery did she fail to receive the attention and credit that should have been hers in total.

Cecelia Gaposchkin was an astronomer who based her thesis on the contents and molecular makeup of the suns and stars that dot the observable universe. Beginning her long tour to her fame, Cecelia initially began to lean towards botany as her choice of career even though she chose to keep physics and chemistry on the schedule as well (Bartusiak 36). However, as fate would have it a particular lecture given by Arthur Eddington regarding his expedition to observe the 1919 solar eclipse. As he explained how his observation proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, Cecelia felt the rush of her world changing and her eyes opening to the heavens (Cosmic Horizons). In the time after that lecture Cecelia attended the Cambridge Universities Observatory open night and hounded the employees with enough questions that they decided to take her to Professor Eddington himself. To whom she exclaimed how her eye opening convinced her to pursue her opportunities as an astronomer (Cosmic Horizons).

Her life only truly opened up before her when she made her trek “across the pond” in 1923 in order to follow a greater opportunity for a fellowship through Harvard University Observatory. On her arrival she was introduced to a group of women who worked to catalog stellar bodies by the spectrum of the light they produced, these women were known as the “Harvard Computers, or alternately “Pickering’s Harem”. They were overseen by Edward Charles Pickering (Cosmos). Among these women was Annie Jump Cannon, the mastermind behind the stellar classification system (Cosmos). Which at the time was directly up Cecelia’s alley, she was “more intrigued by the physical interpretation of stellar spectrums” (Bartusiak 36). With the assistance of Ms. Cannon and the work of Indian physicist Meghnad Saha, Cecelia would proceed to use the vast collection of spectra the Harvard Observatory had in order to understand the composition of the stars (Bartusiak 37).

Cecelia Gaposchkin was convinced by Dr. Harlow Shapely to pursue a doctoral degree, which she was the first person ever to receive one from the Harvard University field of astronomy (Wiki). Her doctoral thesis was titled "Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars" (Wiki). The basis of her thesis stood on the recent decoding of Annie Jump Cannons stellar classification system, which since its creation scientists failed to determine the purpose of and what each category represented. Initially the classification was crafted by one Wilhelmina Fleming, where the stars were placed into categories alphabetically according to the intensity of the spectral lines of their hydrogen (Chown). Ms. Cannon rearranged this sequence to allow a smoother transition of spectral line intensity. Which Payne discovered was a temperature sequence where one end was the hottest and the other end was the coolest (Chown).

Cecelia Payne spent some time pouring over Ms. Cannon’s system of classification, thinking hard over the letters. Then a revelation occurred to her, at the solar temperature of 5600 kelvin hydrogen and helium would be stripped of an electron. However those elements produced the most intense signature lines of the spectrum (Chown), which lead her down the rabbit hole. Cecelia came to the conclusion based on her calculations that hydrogen and helium showed such strong signatures due to the fact that there was such a vast quantity of the elements inside the stellar bodies and “they made up 98 percent of the mass of the sun” (Chown).

Cecelia’s doctoral thesis was based on her calculations and the conclusions she had come to establish due to them. Her findings of the immense proportions were frowned upon by one Henry Norris Russell, who stated that “It is clearly impossible that hydrogen should be a million times more abundant than the metals”, the metals referring to the other elements on the periodic table that were found on the Earth (Bartusiak 37). In order to proceed with her career as planned, Cecelia needed the approval of Russell and Harlow Shapely who could make or break a young graduate student’s future. In her reluctant moment of hesitation Cecelia doubted herself just enough to tack on one statement at the end of her thesis, that her calculations of hydrogen and helium were “improbably high, and is almost certainly not real” (Bartusiak 37). Since then, a number of astronomers have claimed that Cecelia’s doctoral thesis was the most brilliant one ever to be written by anyone.

Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin’s findings would later be reiterated in a different format by Russell himself, who became the spearhead for draping the understanding over the astronomical community. However he failed to mention his influence in Cecelia backing away from her findings concerning the stellar bodies. On the other hand Edwin Powell Hubble often joked that Cecelia was the “best man at Harvard” (Bartusiak 38). Cecelia was initially denied her doctorate, then later reviewed and given the degree she had worked so tirelessly for and even after that she was denied her proper position in the university and was given the title of Technical Assistant under Professor Shapely. In 1956 she was granted the position she truly deserved as full professor and chair of the Astronomy Department. This made her Cecelia the first woman recognized as such by Harvard University (Cosmic Horizons).

Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin passed away on December 7, 1979. Having written many articles and papers and even books over her studies, Cecelia left a massive impact and crafted a path by hand for other women in not only the astronomy community but the sciences in general. Before her passing she received a great number of honors and awards based upon her merit and intelligence, including honorary degrees from several other colleges besides Harvard. However, beyond those awards Cecelia even had an asteroid named after her (Wikipedia). Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin left a great shoe to fill behind her in the scientific community, and with that great leaps and bounds have been made after the understanding that the key to discovery is to never stop questioning.

Works Cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin

Wikipedia article on Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin

(Wiki)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_the_Sun

Wikipedia article on Sisters of the Sun as seen on Cosmos

(Cosmos)

http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_payne.html

Excerpt from Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge

Editors: Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Academic Search Complete

The Star Who Unraveled the Sun

By: Marcus Chown

(Chown)

Academic Search Complete

The Stuff of Stars

By: Marcia Bartusiak

(Bartusiak)

AST 113 students - Here's a few book-keeping announcements:

1) The midterm will now be 10/16 and not 10/9 in class. It will be multiple choice and scantrons will be provided. The test will be closed notes and computers/phones, etc. Please bring a #2 pencil.

2) I have updated the course webpage at:

http://www.plavchan.com/msu/ast113/

3) I have also posted a new version of the Syllabus course schedule, and a Midterm study guide.

4) The group project video due dates remain the same as before, since I had already added an extra week around the midterm. The Sun and Stars group project videos remain due 10/16.

5) I have updated the homework due dates, delaying most by one week. There will be no homework due this week as we finish up Telescopes and the Sun. The Sun and Stars homework will be due 10/16, the day of the midterm, and is available now for you to start working on.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email me at peterplavchan@missouristate.edu, talk to me after class, or stop by my office during office hours or during some other time that is more convenient for you.

- Dr Plavchan

AST 113: Modern Astronomy

Friday, October 30, 2015

Exoplanet by Kameron, Cody & Allyssa

Monday, October 26, 2015

Exoplanets by Jamie and Jesus

Friday, October 23, 2015

Star Birth- Abigail Pritchert & Olivia Smith

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Star Birth Presentation

Star Births - Josh Burch and Joe Price

Friday, October 16, 2015

The Sun and Stars - Aubrynne Russell, Jonathan WIlliams, and Ryan Parker

Amazing new views of Enceladus

Thursday, October 15, 2015

The Sun and Stars: by Emma Crosswhite, Zakary Banks, and Adam Bruns

The Sun and Other Stars

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin

Monday, October 5, 2015

Telescopes

Sunday, October 4, 2015

AST 113 - General class announcements

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Telescopes!

Light, Matter, and TELESCOPES.