The Glass Universe

by Dava Sobel

  “The first part of this morning at the Observatory,” Mrs. Fleming reported on March 1, “was devoted to the revision of Miss Cannon’s work on the classification of the bright southern stars, which is now in preparation for the printer.” Miss Cannon had picked up the knack for classification much faster than Mrs. Fleming expected. Of course, Miss Cannon enjoyed the advantage of college-level instruction in spectroscopy, as well as several years’ experience as an assistant physics teacher and observer—opportunities that had been denied Mrs. Fleming. Still, there was no begrudging Miss Cannon the credit due her for making rapid, accurate evaluations of stellar types. She mirrored Miss Maury’s ability to characterize individual lines in the hundreds of bright stellar spectra assigned to her, but she did not insist, as Miss Maury had done, on some altogether new scheme of her own devising. Instead Miss Cannon abided by Mrs. Fleming’s lettered categories. She had in fact built a bridge between the two Harvard sorting systems by simplifying Miss Maury’s double-tiered division and skewing Mrs. Fleming’s alphabetical order. Since both those approaches were arbitrary, founded solely on the appearance of the spectra, Miss Cannon was free to assert her own sense of order. After all, astronomers could not yet tie any given traits of stars, such as temperature or age, to the various groupings of spectral lines. What they needed was a consistent classification—a holding pattern for the stars—that would facilitate fruitful future research. Miss Cannon thought it best to move Mrs. Fleming’s O stars from the tail end to the top of the list, giving the helium lines precedence over the hydrogen, in the fashion of Miss Maury. B stars likewise ranked ahead of the A in Miss Cannon’s appraisal. Beyond those rearrangements, alphabetical order again held sway, except where Miss Cannon conflated certain categories. C, D, E, and a few other class distinctions had fallen away. The resulting order wound up as O, B, A, F, G, K, M. (A wag at Princeton later made the string of letters memorable by the phrase “Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me!”)

  Mrs. Fleming’s March 1 journal entry continued with “the classification of the spectra of the faint stars for the Southern Draper Catalogue.” This was Mrs. Fleming’s own province, though she shared the vast territory with Louisa Wells, Mabel Stevens, Edith Gill, and Evelyn Leland. Whereas, at the beginning of Mrs. Fleming’s career, the faint stars of the northern sky had belonged to her alone, the southern sky could not be managed single-handedly. The observing conditions at Arequipa, for one thing, coaxed many more faint stars out of the dark. On plates made with the Bruce telescope, even ninth-magnitude spectra appeared legible enough for the positions of individual lines to be measured. Moreover, any newfound variable necessitated a search through as many as one hundred previous plates of the same sky area, taken through the decade in Peru, in order to confirm the star’s variability. Every year this part of Mrs. Fleming’s work grew more laborious, owing to the ever-richer trove of material for comparison. The numerous discoveries that had brought her such pleasure, such acclaim—so many cuttings in her scrapbook—weighed on her now. Even the director admitted that it had become difficult to amass all the required data for one variable star before another turned up.

  “The work of measurement is already well advanced,” Mrs. Fleming said of the lines in the southern spectra, still on day one in her journal, “and we expect to accomplish much during the coming summer. Professor Bailey’s observations with the meridian photometer in South America then came up for examination.”

  Solon Bailey, now back in Cambridge, was writing out the results of his five-year sojourn at Arequipa. His southern magnitudes, or brightness assessments, focused on the multitude of variable stars in star clusters—the “cluster variables,” as he called them. Glass plates he had taken through the Bache, Boyden, and Bruce telescopes revealed some five hundred variables in those stellar agglomerations, and their photographic brightness needed to be rectified with his visual observations. Often he spent the night at the observatory, aiding the director in new observations or supervising one or another of the assistants. The Baileys’ fifteen-year-old son, Irving, whose entire childhood education concerned the natural history and archaeology of the high Andes, now attended the Cambridge Latin School, in preparation for entering Harvard College.

  “Various other pieces of work” claimed Mrs. Fleming’s attention during that first morning of record, and in the afternoon several business matters called her to Boston. Later on, she wrote, “I joined Mrs. S. I. Bailey, Miss Anderson, and my sister Mrs. Mackie at the Castle Square Theatre. The play was ‘The Firm of Girdlestone’* and we all enjoyed it. Mrs. Bailey tried to persuade me to stop over and dine with her, and spend the night, but my little family needs me at home in the morning. They are apt to be late for breakfast, and consequently for daily duties, when the head of the house is not there to get them going.”

  The next day at the observatory, March 2, Mrs. Fleming devoted herself “to miscellaneous odds and ends, and a gathering together of loose strands.” These included keeping up with the scientific correspondence and sending out copies of the observatory’s latest pamphlet, “Standards of Faint Stellar Magnitudes, No. 2,” to all those affiliates, both amateur and professional, who followed the fluctuating brightness of the variable stars.

  “Next in order came Miss Cannon’s remarks on the classification of spectra. This is very trying work as so many things have to be taken into consideration, especially where it is found necessary to change the form of a remark.” Each such comment for publication offered a specific, often lengthy description of some aspect of a spectral peculiarity. It took time to make Miss Cannon see “why we had changed ‘one thing’ and questioned ‘another.’” Miss Cannon’s remarks struck Mrs. Fleming as voluminous, threatening to fill a couple dozen double-columned pages of the smallest print. Not even Miss Maury had found it necessary to remark at such length.

  The end of the day afforded Mrs. Fleming a quiet period for reflection. “My small family has deserted me this evening. I am the loadstone left to prevent the house from blowing away. After dinner Miss Cannon found that the clouds had cleared away and the stars were coming out, so she went over to the Observatory to get her observations of the circumpolar variables with the 6 inch telescope. Edward has gone down to study with Mr. Garrett who is in his section (Mining Engineering Course) in Tech. Neyle Fish, Edward’s young friend who has been with us since Christmas night, has gone to make some calls, and I am awaiting Miss Cannon’s return. If she gets home early we may be able to dispose of some of the questions regarding the remarks in her classification. Meanwhile I must see the ‘Herald’ and find out from it, if I can, the condition of the Boers and the British in South Africa. Edward talks of going out there when he finishes his course at the Institute.”

  Miss Cannon stayed very late at the telescope that night, which bumped the ongoing discussion of her remarks to the next day, March 3, a typical working Saturday at the observatory. Before lunch, Mrs. Fleming found time to examine a few southern spectrum plates. She lamented that supervision of routine procedures left her less and less time for the “particular investigations” that most interested her, or even “to get well settled down for my general classification of faint spectra for the New Draper Catalogue.”

  Saturday night guests chez Fleming amused themselves playing “India” (a form of rummy), “jackstraws” (pick-up sticks), and the board games “crokinole” and “cue ring.” Sometimes a few friends sang for the rest of the company, but if not, there was plenty of pleasant conversation to go around. Mrs. Fleming prepared fudge and dates stuffed with peanuts to serve to a few guests, or, for a large soiree, creamed oysters with hot cocoa, cakes, and sweets. Cleaning up and winding down afterward with Edward and Miss Cannon, she might not get to bed till well past midnight.

  “This is my day of rest and retirement so far as Observatory work is concerned,” Mrs. Fleming noted Sunday morning, March 4, “but it brings my only opportunities for investigating the condition of household affairs, and I find the day
all too short for them.” The linens had to be changed, the family wash gathered for the laundress. “Alas! how matter of fact and different from the Sunday morning duties of other officers of the University.”

  • • •

  TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY FERVOR found William H. Pickering plotting a new scientific adventure. He had recently burnished his international reputation by making a major discovery: In March 1899 he detected a new moon of Saturn orbiting beyond the planet’s vast rings. The revelation of a ninth Saturnian satellite put William in a league with the observatory’s exalted father-and-son former directors, the Bonds. Half a century earlier, in September 1848, William Cranch Bond and George Phillips Bond together had uncovered the eighth known moon of Saturn, which they named Hyperion. They had spotted it through the lens of the Great Refractor. William’s new moon, like so many other recent findings at the observatory, turned up on Bruce telescope photographs. Although the object was extremely dim, below fifteenth magnitude, William flushed it from hiding by superposing glass negatives of long exposures taken on successive nights. Only one among the many minuscule grayish dots changed position from image to image. In keeping with the established nomenclature theme of mythological Titans for Saturn’s attendants, William suggested the name Phoebe, and it stuck.

  The possibility of another, even more significant discovery fanned William’s desire to view the upcoming total solar eclipse on May 28, 1900, which promised to be visible across the southeastern United States. With the Sun’s light masked by the Moon, and the favorable geometry of this particular eclipse, William hoped to discern a planet lying inside the orbit of Mercury. Several astronomers suspected the Sun of harboring a large close companion, or inter-Mercurial planet, and William believed his photography skills sufficient to expose the object. His brother, Edward, who usually frowned on the expense and possible futility of eclipse expeditions, blessed the plan. With the funds allotted, William was building a large camera capable of capturing a dim phantom under twilight conditions.

  Mrs. Fleming anticipated joining the eclipse party. Examining the eclipse photographs for signs of a planet between the Sun and Mercury, though challenging, would probably not differ much from her morning task on March 5, when she relocated the missing asteroid Fortuna on four recent chart plates. Then, after critiquing some remarks by Professor Wendell, the director’s photometry partner, on variable star magnitudes, she grappled again with Miss Cannon’s remarks. “This takes more time and concentration of thought than any manuscript I have worked on since we put Miss Maury’s volume (XXVIII, part 1) through the printer’s hands,” she judged. “If one could only go on and on with original work, looking for new stars, variables, classifying spectra and studying their peculiarities and changes, life would be a most beautiful dream; but you come down to its realities when you have to put all that is most interesting to you aside, in order to use most of your available time preparing the work of others for publication. However, ‘Whatsoever thou puttest thy hand to, do it well.’ I am more than contented to have such excellent opportunities for work in so many directions, and proud to be considered of any assistance to such a thoroughly capable Scientific man as our Director.”

  Throughout her journal, Mrs. Fleming expressed only positive sentiments about Edward Pickering, except on the matter of her remuneration. When she engaged him on March 12 in “some conversation” about pay, she got no satisfaction. “He seems to think that no work is too much or too hard for me, no matter what the responsibility or how long the hours. But let me raise the question of salary and I am immediately told that I receive an excellent salary as women’s salaries stand. If he would only take some step to find out how much he is mistaken in regard to this he would learn a few facts that would open his eyes and set him thinking. Sometimes I feel tempted to give up and let him try some one else, or some of the men to do my work, in order to have him find out what he is getting for $1500 a year from me, compared with $2500 from some of the other [male] assistants. Does he ever think that I have a home to keep and a family to take care of as well as the men? But I suppose a woman has no claim to such comforts. And this is considered an enlightened age!”

  For a week following that expression of frustration, Mrs. Fleming felt too tired in the evening to recap her long days. At first she thought this failure “due to laziness, which with me would be something heretofore unknown.” It turned out to be the onset of the “grippe,” which soon confined her to bed, weak and feverish. When her son came down with the same contagious complaint, their doctor put them both on a regimen of beef tea. As Marie, the domestic, also fell sick—too sick to tend them or even repair to her own home—the doctor found a temporary caretaker for all three patients.

  Miss Cannon remained well and continued her nightly observation of the circumpolar variables. She divided her days between the glass plates in the Brick Building and the holdings of the observatory’s library, where she engaged in new paperwork the director entrusted to her: She now had charge of maintaining a card catalogue of vital statistics on variable stars. This resource, begun in 1897 by a former assistant, already consisted of fifteen thousand cards listing every published reference to the approximately five hundred known variables, culled from bulletins, journals, and reports of observers all over the world. Miss Cannon could read both French and German, the other two languages of science. She fattened the decks of cards in the existing bibliography and created new card files as new variables came to light.

  In mid-April, when Mrs. Fleming fully recovered her strength, and no longer needed to take a carriage to the observatory, she reviewed her time-capsule diary with a pang of contrition. “I find that on March 12 I have written at considerable length regarding my salary. I do not intend this to reflect on the Director’s judgment, but feel that it is due to his lack of knowledge regarding the salaries received by women in responsible positions elsewhere. I am told that my services are very valuable to the Observatory, but when I compare the compensation with that received by women elsewhere, I feel that my work cannot be of much account.”

  • • •

  EDWARD PICKERING HIGHLY VALUED the accomplishments and industry of Mrs. Fleming. Indeed, he planned to nominate her for the 1900 Bruce Medal. Who better? In view of the important part taken by women in American astronomy, he reasoned, and given the fact that the Bruce Medal had been established by a woman, it seemed only natural that the honor be bestowed on the woman who had made the greatest number of important astronomical discoveries to date, namely Mrs. W. P. Fleming of Harvard. The recent and much regretted passing of Miss Bruce, who had explicitly opened the award to women, seemed to underscore Pickering’s argument, and he hoped the other members of the prize committee would agree to see things his way. Some resistance was to be expected, of course, just as the Harvard Corporation had resisted, for a time, his idea of conferring the “curator” title on Mrs. Fleming. The men of the corporation had similarly balked at his suggestion that they appoint Mrs. Draper to the observatory’s Visiting Committee, but eventually they relented and she became its first female member.

  Mrs. Draper’s frequent visits to the observatory, with or without the excuse of a committee meeting, always cheered her. She loved seeing the Draper Memorial work in progress, and took interest in the other projects as well. In the spring of 1900, she expressed the desire to accompany the upcoming Harvard expedition to observe the May 28 eclipse. She had experienced only one total solar eclipse—that of 1878—but without actually seeing it, owing to her voluntary seclusion in the tent where she counted out the seconds of totality. This time she would have nothing to do but view the phenomenon in the pleasant company of her personal guests, Edward and Lizzie Pickering, along with Mrs. Fleming and Miss Cannon.

  The director had not meant to join the eclipse party, as he was not needed for the planned observations and therefore could not justify the added expense. However, Mrs. Draper’s magnanimous invitation changed his mind. She made all the
travel arrangements—railroad tickets, boat accommodations, the hotel rooms in Norfolk and Savannah, even a book for Pickering to read on the way down, called Confessions of a Thug.* “You will find it full of horrors,” she promised. “It might make good reading for a steamer, it is sufficiently thrilling to keep one interested and is a page of history.”

  At the chosen viewing site in Washington, Georgia, the Harvard groups converged with astronomers from MIT and from Percival Lowell’s Flagstaff observatory. The weather did not disappoint. William Pickering set up his special camera, which looked like a huge box, eleven feet long and seven wide, with four lenses of three-inch aperture arrayed to capture the inter-Mercurial panorama.

  When the partial phase of the eclipse began, around half past noon, Mrs. Draper and the others avoided looking directly at the Sun, in order to protect their eyes from injury, but at the cry of “Totality!” about an hour later, they all looked up to drink in the sight.

  Where the midday Sun had blazed, an eerie reversal now deepened the color of the sky and cast a sudden chill over the observers. The dark face of the new Moon hung like a great black hole overhead, surrounded by the glimmering fringe of the Sun’s corona. The corona, invisible under normal conditions, extended its platinum-colored streamers as though reaching out to the planets Mercury and Venus, which now came into view against the background of crepuscular blue. The strange, beautiful vision commandeered the senses for a full minute. Then, as the Moon continued moving in its orbit, a blinding shaft of sunlight shot through a gap in the mountains on the lunar limb, signaling the end of the event.