Women Hold Up Half The Sky

There's a website devoted to the Woman Astronomer, of the past, present and future.

Here's the URL:

http://www.womanastronomer.com/

It does not appear to have been updated since 2008, which is a pity. If you're interested in astronomy, email the website people and tell them to get back to work! And subscribe to their newsletter!

Here are the articles you can read at the website:

Historical Women Astronomers

Antonia Maury - A Spectral Star

Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Lady of Luminosity

Harvard Computers - From Pickering's Harem to Astronomy's Stars

Caroline Herschel - Celestial Cinderella

Hypatia of Alexandria - A Woman Before Her Time

Annie Jump Cannon - Celestial Computer

Williamina Paton Fleming - From Housekeeper to Astronomer

Dorrit Hoffleit - Bright Star


Professional Women Astronomers (Current)

Debra Fisher - Planet Hunter

Carolyn Shoemaker - The Comet Hunter

Jill Tarter - Looking for Life


Amateur Women Astronomers
Alice Villa-Real - Manila, Philippines

Henrietta Swan Leavitt: Human Computer

Alright, calling Henrietta a "human computer" in the subject line might be deemed as deliberately misleading my readers. She wasn't a "human computer," as in an android or a robot of some kind, or even with the brain of a computer, like The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes (and I'm referring to the original, and best movie, not the remake!).

She was called a computer because she did computations, in a time when mechanical and electronic calculators were not readily available. Today, she's also termed an astronomer, although that's not how she was viewed at the observatory where she worked.

Henrietta was born on July 4, 1868 and died on December 12, 1921, at the age of only 53.

Henrietta graduated from Radcliffe College, a woman's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating, she went to work in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory, as a computer, earning $10.50-a-week. (Not that that was bad money in 1893!)

This was considered a menial job, although it was an extremely important one. She, along with several other women assistants, were assigned to count images on photographic plates, taken over long periods of time. By comparing plate after plate, any objects that moved could be found -- planets, comets, and so on.

Leavitt displayed such aptitude for the work that she was soon placed in charge of the other computers, and she started assessing and making her own conclusions about the data.

Henrietta's study of the plates led her to propound a groundbreaking theory, that was the basis for the pivotal work of her boss, astronomer Edwin Hubble. Leavitt's discovery of the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables radically changed the theory of modern astronomy. Hubble received the credit for this, of course --as is usually the case for any assistant who provides the information that the "name" scientist uses to come up with this theories. (However, Hubble did give her credit and point out that she should have won the Nobel prize for her work. Unfortunately, she died from cancer before she could even be nominated.

We can never know what Leavitt might not have accomplished if she'd been in good health. But constant illness sidelined her from time to time at the observatory, and she eventually passed away.

Marine Biologist: Cindy Lee Van Dover

Cindy Lee Van Dover is a marine biologist, who is also one of the few pilots for the submersible Alvin. (Use of the submersible is carefully regulated among scientists, who have to be trained in how to pilot it safely.)

Cindy Lee's work is mentioned in the book The Incredible Submersible Alvin Discovers a Strange Deep-Sea World, by Brad Matsen. It's the story of how the Alvin discovered the "black smokers" way back in 1979.



The Alvin is a small submersible ( a military submersible is called a submarine, a submersible used for research is always a submersible) that fits only 3 people in its circular pressure compartment. It is 23 feet long and 8 feet wide. It can travel at a maximum speed of only 2 knots, or 3 miles per hour. Alvin has been in steady use since 1964.

Before she trained to become a pilot of the Alvin, Cindy Lee was a research assistant to a marine biologist. Her first trips out into the deep ocean were in companion ships, that were used as "tenders" to the Alvin. When she saw the Alvin in use, she decided she wanted to be able to take a trip inside it -- an honor that it only granted to the world's top marine scientists.

She earned herdoctorate in deep-ocean ecology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and did research work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which is Alvin's home base.

In 1989, Cindy Lee began learning how to pilot the Alvinn

"When I wasn't working on Alvin [as an assistant to the electrician in charge of the ship)] I studied her so hard I thought my brain was going to burst. I would fall asleep with my pencil in hand, sketching out one more time from memory the power distribution system of the sub."

In 1991, Cindy Lee was certified as an Alvin pilot - the first woman pilot the Alvin ever had.

Here are three books written by Cindy Lee Van Dover. Two are "popular" books, meaning that the general public, if well read, can read and enjoy them, and one is written targeted directly at marine scientists. Generally, you can tell what type of book it is from the price. Any book over $50 is targeted for scientists, or college students!

Five Dolphin Species and Where They Live

There are almost 40 species of dolphins. Six of them live in rivers rather than in oceans - which is interesting in itself.

However, this article is going to concern itself with the oceanic dolphins. We'll start with five this Sunday, and carry on with five more next Saturday.

Where do they live?

Long beaked and short beaked common dolphins: Abundant in the western Mediterranean Sea until the 1960s

Bottle-nosed dolphins: When people think of a "dolphin", it is typically the bottle-nosed dolphin that they picture. "Flipper" was a bottle-nosed. It inhabits temperate and tropical oceans throughout the world. They don't inhabit polar waters.

Northern rightwhale dolphin: found in the Pacific.
Southern rightwhale dolphine: Southern right whale dolphins (the only dolphins without dorsal fins in the southern hemisphere) live in subtropical to subantarctic oceans of the southern hemisphere. Large populations are recorded off the western coasts of South America, where they are targeted by whaling operations; and off the coast of New Zealand

Tucuxi: Despite being classified as an oceanic dolphin, the Tucuxi lives in the rivers of the Amazon Basin!

Here's a project! Do some research to find out why a dolphin that lives in the rivers of the Amazon Basin is classified as an Oceanic Dolphin instead of as a River Dolphin!

Dolphin Data

Pacific White Sided Dolphin

When talking about the mammals of the ocean, people usually say, "I like dolphins," or "I like sharks" or "I like whales." But actually, there are several types of dolphins, sharks and whales. So its necessary to do a little bit of research to learn about each type of cetacean (suh-tay-shun) or elasmobranch, (ee-lazmo-branch) where they live, and what their habits are.

A cetacean is "belonging to the Cetacea, an order of aquatic, chiefly marine mammals, including the whales and dolphins."

A shark, on the other hand, is an elasmobranch. "Belonging or pertaining to the Elasmobranchii, the subclass of cartilaginous fishes comprising the sharks and rays."

I'll talk about sharks and rays and what cartilage is, next weekend.

This weekend, it's about dolphins.

The Killer Whale is not really a whale, but a dolphin!

Dolphins are marine mammals. They are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin.

Six species of dolphins are called whales, even though they aren't whales:
Melon-headed Whale
Killer Whale (Orca)
Pygmy Killer Whale
False Killer Whale
Long-finned Pilot Whale
Short-finned Pilot Whale

There are two main types of dolphins - those that live in the ocean and those that live in rivers.

Below is a list of each type. Tomorrow, I'll share more information on dolphins.

TO DO:

Start a notebook for dolphins. At the top of each page, write down the name of each species of dolphin. Then, as you learn more about each dolphin, write it on the appropriate page. If you start studying dolphins at a young age, and learn about one dolphin each week, in a few years you'll be an expert on them!

Oceanic dolphins
Long-Beaked Common Dolphin
Short-Beaked Common Dolphin
Common Bottlenose Dolphin
Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin
Northern Rightwhale Dolphin
Southern Rightwhale Dolphin
Tucuxi
Costero
Indo-Pacific Hump-backed Dolphin
Chinese White Dolphin
Atlantic Humpbacked Dolphin
Atlantic Spotted Dolphin
Clymene Dolphin
Pantropical Spotted Dolphin
Spinner Dolphin
Striped Dolphin
Rough-Toothed Dolphin
Chilean Dolphin
Commerson's Dolphin
Heaviside's Dolphin
Hector's Dolphin
Risso's Dolphin
Fraser's Dolphin
Atlantic White-Sided Dolphin
Dusky Dolphin
Hourglass Dolphin
Pacific White-Sided Dolphin
Peale's Dolphin
White-Beaked Dolphin
Australian Snubfin Dolphin
Irrawaddy Dolphin

Chinese River Dolphin

River Dolphins
Ganges and Indus River Dolphin
Ganges River Dolphin (or Susu)
Indus River Dolphin (or Bhulan)
Amazon River Dolphin (or Boto)
Chinese River Dolphin (or Baiji),(possibly extinct, since December 2006)
La Plata Dolphin (or Franciscana)
Irrawaddy Dolphin (can be either oceanic or river)

The Sturgeon General: Sylvia Earle

Sylvia Earle is an American oceanographer. She has a variety of fond nicknames -"Her Deepness" and "The Sturgeon General" because of her many accomplishments.

Birth and Childhood
She was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey on August 30, 1935, and raised on a small farm by her parents, Alice Freas and Lewis Reade.

As a child, Syvlia loved to explore and discover the creatures and plants in the wilderness around her home. Her parents taught her to respect wild creatures and not to be afraid of the unknown.

When she was 13, Sylvia's family moved to Dunedin, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico. There, she continued her fascination with discovery. Although her parents could not afford to send her to college, she was an exceptional student and won scholarships to Florida State University, where she received her B.S. degree in 1955. Throughout her school years, she supplemented her scholarship money by working in the college laboratories.

It was in Florida that Sylvia first learned to scuba dive, and desired to use what was then new technology to study marine life from a close-up vantage point. Fascinated by all aspects of the ocean and marine life, Sylvia decided to specialize in botany.

Education and Family
Syvlia earned her Master's at Duke University in 1956. Afterwards, she married and start a family. At the same time, she remained active in her profession.

In 1964, when her children were two and four, Sylvia traveled to the Indian Ocean for six weeks to join a National Science Foundation expedition. Indeed, she continued to participate in research projects all over the world.

In 1966, she received her Ph.D. from Duke. Her dissertation Phaeophyta of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico created a sensation in the oceanographic community, because never before had a marine scientist made such a long and detailed firsthand study of aquatic plant life.

In 1968, she traveled to a hundred feet below the waters of the Bahamas in the submersible Deep Diver. She was four months pregnant at the time.

Sylvia has spent her lifetime working on the project: cataloging every species of plant that can be found in the Gulf of Mexico.

Positions
1967-1969 -- Radcliffe Institute Scholar
1967-1981 -- Research Fellow, and then Associate at Harvard University
1969-1981 -- Research Associate at the University of California, Berkeley
1979-1986 -- Curator of Phycology at the California Academy of Sciences

Tektite Project
In 1969 Sylvia applied to participate in the Tektite project. This project was sponsored jointly by the U.S. Navy, the Department of the Interior and NASA, and it allowed teams of scientist to live for weeks at a time in an enclosed habitat on the ocean floor fifty feet below the surface, off the Virgin Islands.

By this time, Sylvia had spent more than a thousand research hours underwater, more than any other scientists who applied to the program, but, as she says, "the people in charge just couldn't cope with the idea of men and women living together underwater."

The result was Tektite II, Mission 6, an all-female research expedition led by Sylvia herself. She and four other women dove 50 feet below the surface to the small structure that was their home for the next two weeks. The publicity surrounding this adventure made Sylvia Earle a recognizable face beyond the scientific community.

Indeed, the scientists found they had become celebrities and were given a ticker-tape parade and a White House reception upon their return to the surface. After that Sylvia was increasingly in demand as public speaker, and she became an outspoken advocate of undersea research. At the same time, she began to write for National Geographic and to produce books and films.

Besides trying to arouse greater public interest in the sea, she hoped to raise public awareness of the damage being done to our aquasphere by pollution and environmental degradation.

In the 1970s, scientific missions took Sylvia Earle to the Galapagos, to Panama, to China and the Bahamas and to the Indian Ocean. During this period she also began a productive collaboration with undersea photographer Al Giddings. Together, they investigated the battleship graveyard in the Caroline Islands of the South Pacific. In 1977 they made their first voyage following the great sperm whales. In a series of expeditions they followed the whales from Hawaii to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Bermuda and Alaska. Their journeys were recorded in the documentary film Gentle Giants of the Pacific (1980).

In 1979, she made an open-ocean JIM suit dive, setting the depth record (for man or woman) of 1250 feet. Sylvia walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any living human being before or since. At the bottom, she detached from the vessel and explored the depths for two and a half hours with only a communication line connecting her to the submersible, and nothing at all connecting her to the world above. She described this adventure in her 1980 book: Exploring the Deep Frontier.

From 1980 to 1984 she served on NACOA (the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere). In 1985 she founded Deep Ocean Engineering along with her husband, engineer and submersible designer Graham Hawkes, to design, operate, support, and consult on piloted and robotic sub sea systems. In 1987 The Deep Ocean Engineering team designed and built the Deep Rover research submarine, which operates down to 1000 meters. She holds the women's record for a solo dive in a deep submersible (3280 feet, 1000m) achieved in the Deep Rover.

Sylvia took a leave of absence from her businesses in 1990 to accept an appointment as the Chief Scientist for NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration). There, among other duties, she was responsible for monitoring the health of the nation's waters. In this capacity she also reported on the environmental damage wrought by Iraq's burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields.

In 1992, she founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research to further advance marine engineering. Today, she serves as Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society and the company known as DOER Marine is run by her daughter. The company continues to design, build and operate innovative equipment for the deep ocean and other challenging environments.

To date, Sylvia has led over 70 expeditions, logging more than 6500 hours underwater. Among the more than 100 national and international honors she has received is the 2009 TED Prize for her proposal to establish a global network of marine protected areas. She calls these marine preserves "hope spots... to save and restore... the blue heart of the planet."

Sylvia has written more than 125 publications concerning marine science and technology, as well as several books.


Bibiography
Earle, Sylvia (1996). Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0449910652.
Earle, Sylvia (1999). Dive: My Adventures In the Deep Frontier. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792271440.
Earle, Sylvia and Linda K. Glover (2008). Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas (National Geographic Atlas). National Geographic. ISBN 1426203195.
Earle, Sylvia (2001). Hello, Fish!: Visiting The Coral Reef. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792266978.
Cancelmo, Jesse and Sylvia Earle (2008). Texas Coral Reefs (Gulf Coast Studies). Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585446335.
Earle, Sylvia. Editors John W., Jr. Tunnell, Ernesto A. Chavez, Kim Withers (2007). Coral Reefs of the Southern Gulf of Mexico (Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies). Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585446173.
Earle, Sylvia (2000). Sea Critters. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792271815.
Rozwadowski, Helen M., and Sylvia Earle (Foreword) (2005). Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea. Belknap Press. ISBN 0674016912.
Earle, Sylvia, Ed. and Linda K. Glover, Ed. (2004). Defying Ocean's End: An Agenda For Action. Island Press. ISBN 1559637552.
Earle, Sylvia (2003). Jump into Science: Coral Reefs. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792269535.
Earle, Sylvia (2001). National Geographic Atlas of the Ocean: The Deep Frontier. National Geographic. ISBN 0792264266.
Earle, Sylvia and Ellen J. Prager (2001). The Oceans. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0071381775.

Manifesto

I was in a Barnes & Noble store yesterday, and cast my eye on two magazines geared toward girls age 8-14, American Girl and Girl's Life. And their contents just torqued my jaws. Remember - the starting age to read these magazines is 8 years old. And all of the contents was geared toward appearance, and making oneself attractive to boys. "Four hairtyles you'll love, how to know if he really likes you, food that won't make you fat."

Not one leavening article on a woman role model, on some interesting hobby, on an interesting place to visit, something other than a focus on appearance and the necessity for appearing pretty for boys.

Contrast that to a boys magazine for the same age group. I guarantee that there'll be nothing in there except interesting stuff....probably nothing on how to talk to girls, either.

So girls are socialized from the earliest age that it is their appearance that is important, and that if they don't use makeup they must be lesbians (okay, I'm extrapoloating there) and that nothing they can do at any age is more important than being attractive to the boys in their classes.

I mean, come on, why should an 8 year old be putting on makeup? She shouldnt even know anything about sex until she's 14 or so! But of course, in today's age, girls and boys learn about sex at about the age of 8....impossible to keep them innocent very long....and dangerous too, I suppose.

In any event, the purpose of this blog is to present female role models - scientists, mathematicians, explorers, pilots, engineers. It will also share science information.

The title specifies that its for girls, but really, girls and boys can benefit from this blog-zine.