Silent Sky

Silent Sky, by Lauren Gunderson, tells the story of Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1922) an American astronomer who worked at Harvard College Observatory reviewing data about the skies. Together with her female colleagues, known as “computers,” they developed scientific information regarding the size of the universe and the scope and position of the stars. The group worked in a male-dominated field where women’s ideas were often not taken seriously. Even denied access to a telescope, Henrietta and her colleagues nevertheless developed ideas which redefined our understanding of the universe and made ground-breaking discoveries which resonate today in the field of astronomy.