We’re on the edge of our seats waiting for the solar eclipse. We hope you have your solar eclipse glasses and your popcorn ready for this out-of-this-world event.
Of course, we wouldn’t be able to watch this without the tremendous research and innovations of stellar women in STEM. Today we’re shining a much-needed light on scientists and inventors who paved the way for women in astronomy.
Hundreds of people who are visually impaired will be able to experience the solar eclipse thanks to this invention from astronomers Allyson Bieryla and Wanda Díaz-Merced. LightSound is a device that translates changing light intensity into musical tones, allowing blind and visually impaired people to listen as the sky darkens and brightens during the eclipse.
Maria Mitchell is notably known for being one of America’s first women astronomers. In 1878 she led a team of all women science students, known as “the Vassar Girls”, to research the great solar eclipse of the 19th century. Mitchell was one of the earliest advocates for equal pay in STEM and a proponent of women’s higher education.
This scientist’s photography was essential to our understanding of solar eclipses. Astronomer Annie Maunder recorded the first evidence of the movement of sunspot emergence from the poles toward the equator over the Sun’s 11-year cycle.
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