Harvard spectral classification
Espectroscopía estelar y clasificación de Harvard (OBAFGKM)
- Date
- 1890-1901 · confidence high
- Place
- Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Annie Jump Cannon; Williamina Fleming; Antonia Maury; Edward Pickering
- People
- 👤 Annie Jump Cannon1863–1941👤 Antonia Maury1866–1952👤 Edward Charles Pickering1846–1919👤 Williamina Fleming1857–1911
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The 'Harvard computers' classified hundreds of thousands of spectra into the O-B-A-F-G-K-M sequence, ordered by temperature, the basis of the Henry Draper Catalogue and of all stellar astrophysics.
Secchi had proposed a four-type classification in the 1860s.
What it led to
- Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
- Stellar temperatures (Payne, 1925)
- Composition of stars: hydrogen dominance