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Hello all,
I was pleased to see Alan Lorrain’s New Year Message and the announcement that the BAA in 2020 will be Highlighting the contribution of Women in astronomy. In the area of comet observation,research and discovery many women have played a significant role. I have written two articles in the recent past, appearing in The BAA Comet Section publication The Comet’s Tale, about two female astronomers who were very active in cometary research in the past century. One of them, Elizabeth Roemer was a member of the BAA for 50 years. The other Lissi Oterma was a comet discoverer and an expert optician who made Schmidt optics for major observatories. Both have an interesting past and their contribution deserves repeated examination.
I hope you will take the time to read about these two female astronomers. the articles are available at these links:
https://britastro.org/pdf/CometSection/tail38.pdf
https://britastro.org/pdf/CometSection/tail36.pdf
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I have also written on the lives of two prominent women members of the BAA:-
Alice Grace Cook, JBAA, vol. 129, no. 1, p. 29-37, and
Fiammetta Wilson, The Antiquarian Astronomer, issue 13, June 2019, p. 23-29.
The National Science Foundation has announced the LSST is now named the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
It is interesting that the LSST is to be named after Vera Rubin.Her interest in astronomy has been life long and she has always been an active observer. Here are two pictures of her as a young woman one with her homemade telscope and the other using the refractor at Vassar College. So from humble instrumental begginings to the largest telescope in the World. There is progress for you!
Thanks for your posts on this subject. It’s good to see women astronomers of the past getting recognition and emerging from invisibility. Council are considering a programme to highlight the work of women astronomers both professional and amateur during 2020 and to encourage our women members to take an active part in our observing Sections. If you have any ideas about what we can do to progress this theme, please do post them.
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