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Discover more about the pioneering women who worked at observatories in the UK, US and Australia in the late 1800s, in this panel discussion and screening of the film Hidden Figures.

As new technologies and instruments transformed astronomy in the late 1800s, observatory directors around the world started to employ women as cheap labour to help assemble and process vast amounts of photographic glass plates for new star catalogues. 

Some of these ‘computers’ only stayed for a few months or years, but others became experts in their own right and forged long-term careers in astronomy and associated sciences.

Discover more about these pioneering women in an evening panel discussion and film screening at the Royal Observatory's Peter Harrison Planetarium in Greenwich.

Hear from researchers who have investigated women working at observatories in the UK, US and Australia. Who were these women? What did they do? What challenges did they face, and how did conditions vary between observatories?​​​