As director of the Harvard Observatory since 1876, Pickering was the first to include women on his staff, as volunteers and salaried assistants. This, however, appears to have been more an act of economic pragmatism than progressive-mindedness. In spite of the low pay, averaging about $10.50 per week, or about 25 cents an hour, applications from women flooded in from all over the world. Harlow Shapley, a director of the observatory after Pickering, was quoted as saying: "Luckily Harvard College was swarming with cheap assistants; that was how we got things done." The entire job of classifying some 250,000 stars took 40 years to complete. It could not have been accomplished without the group of women whom some alluded to as "Pickering's Harem." Foremost among them were Antonia Maury, Williamina Fleming, and Annie Cannon.
Brought Individuality to Project
Maury's first assignment for Pickering was to determine the orbital period of the spectroscopic binary, Zeta Ursae Majoris, also called Mizar, first discovered by Pickering in 1887. Binaries are stars that orbit so close to each other that they cannot be detected except by a spectroscope. When examined, the spectral lines regularly shift back and forth as the stars revolve around each other.
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