Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Portrait of Prof Michele Dougherty by Amanda Clark/Cabinet Office — Source (not public domain).
On Wednesday, Professor Michele Dougherty CBE FRS FRAS became the first woman appointed Astronomer Royal in the UK. Initially created in 1675 during the reign of Charles II, the present-day post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom involves advising the monarchy on matters related to astronomy, developing international collaborations, and promoting astronomical research. A professor of space physics at Imperial College London, Dougherty had previously served as Executive Chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council and is renowned for leading uncrewed missions to Jupiter and Saturn, which led to the discovery of water on the moon of Enceladus. “For the last 350 years the title of Astronomer Royal has been held by a white male astronomer, and that kind of reflected what the astronomical community has looked like for the last few centuries. But things are changing”, she told the BBC.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Portrait of Caroline Herschel by Melchior Gommar Tieleman, 1829 — Source.
In 1787, the German astronomer Caroline Lucretia Herschel became the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and hold a government position in the UK when she was given an annual salary of £50 by George III after discovering eight comets (the last without the use of a telescope). The younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, Caroline initially took up the discipline to assist her brother’s research: “I did nothing for my brother but what a well-trained puppy dog would have done, that is to say, I did what he commanded me.” After the duo relocated to Dachet near Windsor Castle in 1782, Caroline was tasked with “sweeping” the night sky, and began to discover comets as well as galaxies (she independently observed Messier 110, a satellite of Andromeda). After William’s death, Caroline collaborated with her astronomer nephew John Hershel, receiving a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, which no woman would acquire again until Vera Rubin’s commendation in 1996. In 1846, at the age of 96, Alexander von Humboldt awarded her another gold medal on behalf of the King of Prussia for her valuable contributions to astronomy. Today, the asteroid 281 Lucretia bears her name as well as the “open clusters” NGC 2360 (Caroline’s Cluster) and NGC 7789 (Caroline’s Rose).
