#the glass universe

I am currently reading The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel, about the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th century.

And yesterday in a moment of serendipity I came across Project PHaEDRA, organised by the Wolbach library, using volunteers to crowdsource transcriptions of the notebooks kept by these pioneering astronomers.

I’m starting with just the plate numbers. I’ll work my way up to transcribing full pages. But it is really exciting being able to read what these women wrote (even if I don’t understand most of it).

Side note: the Star Notes part of the project is hosted on a website which also lists lots of different citizen science projects. There are at least three others I want to get involved in. I need more hours in the day…