MELBOURNE OBSERVATORY’S ASTROGRAPHIC WOMEN: STAR MEASURERS AND COMPUTERS

Abstract

: In Australia a significant number of women were employed to measure, log and calculate the position of stars for the Astrographic Catalogue at Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth Observatories. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Astrographic Catalogue was considered the most important astronomical work in Australia. This paper provides a background to the social, legal and gender-specific barriers women faced and then focuses on the first women employed at Melbourne Observatory to measure the stars on glass plate negatives and calculate their relative positions. Charlotte Peel, Lillian Lewis, Muriel Heagney and Sarah Noonan, who worked for various periods of time on the Astrographic Catalogue between 1898 and 1918, are case studied. Rather than an anonymous group of ‘female computers’ this paper presents these four female computers as representative of the individual nature of the women and their range of skills, aptitudes and opportunities to produce new research. Examples of where the women had agency within the Observatory and influenced the physical workplaces and social environment are provided.