Harvard College Observatory

Harvard College Observatory was founded in 1839 when the Harvard Corporation appointed the Boston clockmaker William Cranch Bond as Astronomical Observer to the University, and it grew into one of the most important centres of observational astronomy in the United States. From the late nineteenth century its Henry Draper Catalogue project employed a team of women, including Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, whose stellar classification and variable star work became foundational to twentieth century astrophysics; the observatory's Harvard Plate Stacks hold roughly six hundred thousand astronomical glass plates from this era of photographic astronomy.