“Oh, be a fine girl/guy kiss me,” or maybe not. Learning this phrase has helped multiple astronomers to educate themselves on the spectral classification of stars and continues to do so in today’s time. Annie Jump Cannon’s legacy will carry on lasting a lifetime! The first letters of each word in the phrase represents the seven main types of stars. Starting with ”‘O,” these stars are very young, blue, hot, massive and extremely bright star. This type of star is very uncommon similar to the “B” and “A” stars. These stars get their energy from nuclear fusion, as they convert Hydrogen to Helium. As these massive stars begin to die once they’ve worn out their hydrogen and are now very old stars, they turn into giants/supergiants (old, large stars), resting just above the main sequence stars. This is where the “F” and “G” stars are located. The hotter they are, the brighter they are demonstrating the Sun being a G star. Next, the core contracts as the outer layers expand. This is leading to the explosion of stars eventually becoming a planetary nebula or supernova, depending on their mass soon becoming white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes again dependent on their mass. Smaller “G” type stars eventually become faint, virtually dead white, hot, and dim stars that are below the main sequence. These stars have shrunk, wore out their nuclear fuels and are on the verge of eventually becoming cold, and dark. Closest to Earth “K” and “M” are prime examples of these shrunken stars. Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) was taught the constellations from her mother Mary Jump.
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Cannon’s interest in astronomy started then. Cannon started her study on physics and astronomy at Wellesley College, which was one of the top schools for women at the time. It was doing her college years that she learned spectroscopy, which became the establishment of her categorizing stars. During this time, she had gotten sick with scarlet fever leading to her becoming completely deaf, likely due to the fever. Even so, she managed to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1884, returning home to Dover, Delaware. At the time with such limited career paths for women, Cannon learned photography. She even traveled to Europe in 1892 to take pictures of the solar eclipse. When her mother passed in 1894, she begins a teaching role in physics at Wellesley College with one of her former teacher’s Sarah Frances Whiting. During her time as a teacher at the Wellesley College, Cannon studied chemistry as well as astronomy at a postgraduate level and later on began working at Radcliffe College. She started assisting in the physics department and became a “special student” of astronomy at the Radcliffe Women’s College at Harvard. It was here that she was able to gain access to the Harvard College Observatory. Two years later, in 1896, Cannon was hired to work with Edward Charles Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory along with several other women referred to as “computers” because they examined the luminosity, positions, and spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars imaged on glass plates. In 1901, Cannon came up with a procedure of organizing the stars in different classes in relations with the temperatures and spectral classifications. By 1907, she received another degree from Wellesley being her master’s. Pickering began
Cannon’s interest in astronomy started then. Cannon started her study on physics and astronomy at Wellesley College, which was one of the top schools for women at the time. It was doing her college years that she learned spectroscopy, which became the establishment of her categorizing stars. During this time, she had gotten sick with scarlet fever leading to her becoming completely deaf, likely due to the fever. Even so, she managed to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1884, returning home to Dover, Delaware. At the time with such limited career paths for women, Cannon learned photography. She even traveled to Europe in 1892 to take pictures of the solar eclipse. When her mother passed in 1894, she begins a teaching role in physics at Wellesley College with one of her former teacher’s Sarah Frances Whiting. During her time as a teacher at the Wellesley College, Cannon studied chemistry as well as astronomy at a postgraduate level and later on began working at Radcliffe College. She started assisting in the physics department and became a “special student” of astronomy at the Radcliffe Women’s College at Harvard. It was here that she was able to gain access to the Harvard College Observatory. Two years later, in 1896, Cannon was hired to work with Edward Charles Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory along with several other women referred to as “computers” because they examined the luminosity, positions, and spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars imaged on glass plates. In 1901, Cannon came up with a procedure of organizing the stars in different classes in relations with the temperatures and spectral classifications. By 1907, she received another degree from Wellesley being her master’s. Pickering began