Issue of October 3, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. AAS Opens Applications for Shapley Visiting Lecture Program
2. Invitation: Share Your Stories with the CSWA Blog
3. Meet NASA's 10 new astronauts - including 6 women - chosen from 8,000 applicants
4. How AIP is Giving a Name to Mrs. Scientist
5. How a Harvard maverick forever changed our concept of the stars
6. Back to the Cosmos: The Stellar Legacy of Julieta Fierro
7. Mansi Kasliwal Becomes Palomar Observatory Director
8. 15 Forgotten Heroines of Early Science
9. How a mentoring connection boosted my ambitions for a science career
10. Science is leaving behind women, non-English speakers. We must level the field
11. Call for applications for the 2026 Beus Prize Fellowship!
12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
14. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
AAS is re-launching its long-running Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectures Program. Applications to serve as either a Shapley Lecturer, or for a school or community organization to host a visiting Shapley Lecturer, are due 31 October. In 2024–2025 the AAS had a successful pilot partnership with the NASA Community College Network in bringing Shapley Lecturers to twelve community colleges across the country. The AAS is eager to continue engaging community colleges, and to extend our program to any community organizations that would help us reach a broad and diverse audience. If you're curious about participating, or you know of any local organizations that would make a suitable Shapley host, reach out to Tom Rice [tom.rice_at_aas.org].
Read more at
https://aas.org/posts/news/2025/09/aas-opens-applications-shapley-visiting-lecture-program
At the CSWA, we want YOUR STORIES to share with our community. I'm looking for stories about how you came to astronomy and physics, how you decided to study at your current school or your research/post-doc position. Are you running a special program at your university or in your community? Tell us! Are you a specialist in your field and want to share what you're doing? Did you write a paper or present at a conference? Let's highlight that work on the blog! I like to tell people, "We're all living stories." Let's share these stories as part of the CSWA community.
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2025/10/share-your-stories-with-cswa-blog.html
For the first time in the space agency's history, there were more women than men in the incoming astronaut class of scientists, engineers, and test pilots.
Read more at
https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/185496/meet-nasas-10-new-astronauts
Imagine spotting a photo you’re in online and everyone is named in the caption except you; you’re simply referenced as someone’s spouse. This has been a reality for many women who appear in AIP’s photographic collections. They were previously labeled only as “Mrs. [Husband’s Name]” or left entirely unnamed. AIP’s librarians and archivists are combing through hundreds of images to ensure those women are seen, named, and remembered for who they were, which in many cases was accomplished scientists themselves.
Read more at
https://www.aip.org/mrs-scientist
“Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was just 25 years old when she discovered what stars are made of: hydrogen, helium and just a dash of nearly every other element. Her finding in 1925 was among the first successful attempts to apply the nascent field of quantum physics to observations of stars, and it was immediately controversial. At the time, astronomers believed that stars were essentially just hot Earths — incandescent orbs of iron, silicon and the other heavy elements that constitute our rocky world. Payne-Gaposchkin, a young woman astronomer, was asking her senior colleagues to throw out everything they thought they’d known about stars and write the universe anew."
Read more at
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-stars
Long before women could officially attend universities or join scientific societies, brilliant minds were making groundbreaking discoveries in laboratories, observatories, and field sites around the world. Many of these pioneering scientists had their work credited to male colleagues or simply erased from historical records altogether.
Read more at
https://tecscience.tec.mx/en/education-and-humanism/julieta-fierro-back-to-the-cosmos/
"With her appointment, Kasliwal not only breaks a historic gender barrier but also continues to advance the field of observational astronomy, guiding Palomar Observatory into a new era of exploration and discovery."
Read more at
https://globalindiannewsnetwork.com/mansi-kasliwal-becomes-palomar-observatory-director/
"The founder, Atiyah Harmon says she founded the program to transform how Black and Brown girls experience math. Through a culturally affirming, student-centered curriculum, Harmon said, BGLM builds math confidence and pathways into advanced courses and STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math — careers."
Read more at
https://go2tutors.com/15-forgotten-heroines-of-early-science/
How do you convince a teenager that a research career is within their grasp? Madeleine Cheung and her mentor, NASA scientist Charles Miller, explain.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02706-4
Scientific productivity is often measured by the researcher’s number of publications in English. But this metric overlooks the challenges faced by many researchers around the world.
Read more at
Arizona State University invites applications for the postdoctoral position of Beus Prize Fellow to conduct independent research broadly related to the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies, as well as associated instrumentation or discipline-based education.
Read more at
https://sese.asu.edu/beus-prize-fellowship
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