Pickering assigned Leavitt to study variable stars of the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, as recorded on photographic plates taken with the Bruce Astrograph of the Boyden Station of the Harvard Observatory in Arequipa, Peru. She identified 1,777 variable stars.

Leavitt identified variable stars by gathering five images of one section of sky from different nights (four glass negatives and a positive print of a fifth) and overlaying each negative in turn on the positive print.

The best-known relation is the direct proportionality law holding for Classical Cepheid variables, sometimes called the Leavitt Law. [2] [3] [4] Discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the relation established Cepheids as foundational indicators of cosmic benchmarks for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances.

Follow the steps throughout the collection to determine the ways that Leavitt and the other Harvard Computers identified variable stars. In these resources, you'll find images of glass plate photographs that the Computers used for their calculations, as well as videos, quiz questions, and images of Henrietta Leavitt.

Leavitt's task lay in cataloging Cepheids within the Magellanic Clouds. These are variable stars, so named because they periodically blink brighter or pulsate at regular intervals. Examination of plates taken over the years from the telescope images eventually revealed the periodicity.

2019年3月8日 · Leavitt stacked two photographic plates of the Small Magellanic Cloud taken on different nights on top of each other, and noticed that a number of stars changed brightness. Examining further plates, she found 57 new variable stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).

The key for finding the distance to stars much further away was discovered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt who worked at Harvard College Observatory as a “computer,” one of several women paid 25 to 30 cents per hour to extract data from thousands of photographic plates.

Leavitt discovered and cataloged over 1500 variable stars in the nearby Magellanic Clouds. From this catalog, Leavitt discovered that brighter Cepheid variable stars take longer to vary, a fact used today to calibrate the distance scale of our universe .

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer and graduate of Radcliffe College, who worked as a computer at the Harvard College Observatory (HCO), where she examined glass photographic plates and measured the brightness, or magnitude, of stars. This work led her to discover the relation between the luminosity and the period of brightening ...

2024年12月8日 · Henrietta Swan Leavitt (born July 4, 1868, Lancaster, Massachusetts, U.S.—died December 12, 1921, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American astronomer known for her discovery of the relationship between period and luminosity in Cepheid variables, pulsating stars that vary regularly in brightness in periods ranging from a few days to several ...