Henrietta Leavitt, the Woman Who Gave Us a Ruler to Measure the Universe

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Gazing up at the sky, it’s hard not to imagine the sun, moon, stars, and planets as part of an inverted bowl over our heads, even if we know that’s an antiquated way of viewing the heavens. These days, we understand it’s the Earth that’s spinning, spinning daily like a ballerina while also circling the sun on its yearly journey. But the bowl imagery was and remains a reasonable way of envisioning how the skies appear to revolve around us, and when certain stars appear or disappear with the c

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