Some Notes from Annie Jump Cannon's Notebooks (Abstract)

Volume 34 number 2 (2006)

Barbara L. Welther

Abstract

(Abstract only) In the mid-1890s, Annie Jump Cannon decided to return to her alma mater, Wellesley College, to pursue graduate studies in physics and astronomy and to assist her mentor, Professor Sarah Frances Whiting, in teaching the undergraduate courses there. In the fall of 1896, when Whiting sailed to Europe for a sabbatical leave, Cannon journeyed into Cambridge to continue her graduate work at Radcliffe College and to assist in the astronomical research at Harvard College Observatory. There, Professor Pickering, the director of the observatory, gave her some assignments in the fields of variable stars and stellar spectra. Along with her scientific observations, Cannon also made some personal notations. This paper will take a look at some of her notes and observations, especially those of her early, impressionable years at the observatory.