We celebrate WOMEN'S DAY with Carolina Herschel

How could it not be otherwise, since Pitiflo we celebrate the Women's Day with fun activities and learning a lot of new things…

On this occasion the protagonist was astronomy…Yes, the science that deals with the study of the celestial bodies of the universe, including planets and their satellites, comets and meteoroids, stars and interstellar matter, systems of dark matter, gas and dust called galaxies, and clusters of galaxies; so he studies their movements and the phenomena linked to them. Astronomy also encompasses the study of the formation and development of the Universe as a whole through cosmology, and is related to physics through astrophysics, chemistry through astrochemistry, and biology through astrobiology.. 

Our workshop in pitiflu to celebrate women's day came from Carolina Herschel Do you know who it was?

The first female astronomer!

She was a German astronomer. He worked with his brother Sir William Herschel in the development of his telescopes and in his observations.

He discovered eight comets, of which six bear his name, among which the periodic comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, found on December 21, 1788, stands out.

Together with his brother William, he studied astronomy. This is how Carolina's scientific career began, under the guidance of her brother, which finally led her to train herself. William specialized in building the best telescopes of his time, and Carolina began helping to take notes on the celestial bodies he saw and ended up making her own observations, which they then used to compare together. In 1786 it already had its own small observatory. William was the king's astronomer and when she was 37 years old, King George III assigned her a salary as his brother's assistant, which gave her financial independence and allowed her to gradually become a celebrity in the scientific world.

Together with his brother, he discovered a thousand double stars and both demonstrated that many of them were binary systems, thus finding the first proof of the existence of gravity outside the solar system. When William died, even though they no longer lived together because he had married some time before, Carolina left England and returned to Hanover.

Carolina Herschel is considered the first professional astronomer. In 1828 she received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, a society of which she was its first female honorary member. She was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy and in 1846 received the Gold Medal of Sciences from King Frederick William IV of Prussia.

In addition to working as her brother's secretary, she discovered eight comets and three nebulae on her own, and produced various catalogues. His work was recognized to a greater extent after his death in 1848, aged 97.

In the Pitiflu workshop The girls and boys have created their own telescope of constellations and beautiful nebulae that they have taken home... if you want to know about the following Herschel workshop, consult Pitiflu:

https://pitiflu.elcorteingles.es/agenda/