How much do you know about Annie Jump Cannon? Blast to the past to learn more about this awesome astronomer! #deafSTEMchronicle
Transcript: When we look up at the sky on a clear night, we can see millions of stars spread out across the galaxy. Each star is a little bit different and their temperatures are different. Based on their temperature, the color of the star changes. The coolest stars will look red, while the hottest stars will appear blue. In 1911, a woman named Annie Jump Cannon created a new classification system using the temperature of stars. This system replaced an old system and to this day is still used! Annie Jump Cannon was born on December 11, 1863 and she is considered one of the most famous astronomers. At a young age, she became deaf due to scarlet fever likely. She is trained in physics and almost did not become an astronomer due to limited opportunities for women at that time. However, she was able to become a student at the Harvard College Observatory which led to her job where she classified stars. She become so skilled that she was able to classify 5,000 stars a month between 1911-1915. During this time she developed her own technique, which resulted in the famous OBAFGKM classification. OBAFGKM stands for “Oh! Be A Fine Girl/Guy, Kiss Me!” During this time Annie worked with another woman, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who lost her hearing in her adult years due to an illness. Annie manually classified more stars than any other astronomer in the world, around 350,000 stars. She also discovered 300 variable stars, stars whose light fluctuates, 5 novas, and a binary star. Despite the outrage over women working during those times, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Oxford University in 1925. In 1935, she created the Annie Jump Cannon Prize for “the woman of any country, whose contribution to the science of astronomy are the most distinguished”. To this day, this award is still given yearly.
