Issue of February 3, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Crosspost: NASA astronaut Sally Ride statue to be unveiled in Los Angeles on July 4
2. We just had an astronomical cross-quarter day: Ground Hog's Day: 2/2/2023
3. Women Scientists at Mount Wilson Observatory during the Early Years
4. Special Report: Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023
5. Phoebe Waterman - first woman to use a large telescope for her thesis work.
6. Evidence that Saturn's moon Mimas is a stealth ocean world
7. Job Opportunities
8. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
10. 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.
By Elizabeth Howell for space.com
"An Independence Day ceremony will bring a little more space to a presidential museum.
A statue of former NASA astronaut Sally Ride will be unveiled July 4 outside the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, situated west of her hometown of Los Angeles, as part of a series of female-focused monuments designed by filmmaker Steven Barber."
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2023/02/crosspost-nasa-astronaut-sally-ride.html
By Sethanne Howard
02/02/2023 if the first cross quarter day of the year 2023. There are four quarter days (two equinoxes and two solstices) that divide the year into quarters. Cross-quarters are half way between those four days. Each one relates to an ancient holiday. Ground Hog's Day (in the United States) is the first cross quarter day of the year. These are ancient astronomical divisions of the solar year. The other cross-quarter days are May 1, Aug 2, Nov 1.
By Mount Wilson Observatory
"In this four-part series, Eun-Joo Ahn, astrophysicist and History of Science Doctoral Candidate at UC Santa Barbara, tells the story of the forgotten women scientists in the first decade of Mount Wilson Observatory – the work they did, the contributions they made, the cultural and institutional terrain they faced, focusing on Louise Ware and Jennie Belle Lasby.”
Read more at
By NSF Science Board
A diverse workforce provides the potential for innovation by leveraging different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. Innovation and creativity, along with technical skills relying on expertise in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), contribute to a robust STEM enterprise. Furthermore, STEM workers have higher median earnings and lower rates of unemployment compared with non-STEM workers. This report provides high-level insights from multiple data sources into the diversity of the STEM workforce in the United States.
Read more at
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report
The press release was issued 01/31/2023. "Today, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, or NCSES — part of the U.S. National Science Foundation — released Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023, the federal government's latest and most complete analysis of diversity trends in STEM employment and education. The new report shows more women, as well as Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Alaska Native people collectively, worked in STEM jobs over the past decade, diversifying that workforce, and are earning more degrees in science and engineering fields at all levels compared to previous years. However, those groups — as well as people with disabilities — broadly remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics when compared to their overall distribution in the U.S. population, reflecting the larger equity challenges our nation faces."
Read more at
https://beta.nsf.gov/news/diversity-and-stem-2023
By Melissa Joskow, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian
"Phoebe Waterman was breaking down those barriers. Though Waterman had spent time as a “computer” at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, in 1911 she applied, and was accepted to Berkeley’s graduate school for astronomy. By this time, Annie Jump Cannon’s spectral classification system was becoming the world-wide standard. For her Ph.D. thesis, Waterman tested whether Cannon’s system still applied for the spectra of very hot stars when examined in different ways. She was directed to use the Lick 91-centimeter (36-inch) refractor and its premier spectrograph in California, and even modify it, to take these new spectra and verify the universality of Cannon's system. Waterman thus became the first woman to use a very large telescope by herself to conduct research for her thesis"
Read more at
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/computer-astronomer-role-women-astronomy
By Alyssa Rhoden, Southwest Research Institute
"Simulations suggest that Saturn's smallest, innermost moon could have an expanding, geologically young ocean. When a scientist discovered surprising evidence that Saturn's smallest, innermost moon could generate the right amount of heat to support a liquid internal ocean, colleagues began studying Mimas' surface to understand how its interior may have evolved. Numerical simulations of the moon's Herschel impact basin, the most striking feature on its heavily cratered surface, determined that the basin's structure and the lack of tectonics on Mimas are compatible with a thinning ice shell and geologically young ocean."
Read more at:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230131101520.htm
For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here:
https://aas.org/comms/cswa/resources/Diversity#howtoincrease
- Planetary Environments Lab at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
https://www.usajobs.gov/job/702547900
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Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
