Best Of: Annie Maunder, The Victorian Woman Who Chased Eclipses

Annie Maunder: The Victorian Woman Who Chased Eclipses

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Laura Gómez: It's 1898 on the outskirts of a remote town in India. It's just after noon, but all around, darkness is falling. The bright greens and blues of the landscape begin to fade to gray. And in the midst of all this, a group of European astronomers stand in a field, watching the world transform around them. They have spent months eagerly awaiting this moment. And then it happens: All at once, they’re standing in darkness, in the shadow of the moon. One of the astronomers, a woman in a long dress, reaches for her camera and snaps a picture.

Laura Gómez: This is Lost Women of Science. I'm Laura Gómez. Today we have a story about the amateur astronomer Annie Maunder. She chased eclipses all over the world at the turn of the 20th century — and did some of her best science during those brief moments when the moon slid in front of the Sun. This is an adaptation of an episode that originally aired in English before the total solar eclipse of 2024.

Laura Gómez: Annie Maunder was born in Northern Ireland in 1868, into a family of devout Protestants. From a young age, she was fascinated by astronomy. She believed that the heavens, as she called them, had a story to tell, and she wanted to find out what it was. 

She was lucky enough to grow up in a supportive family, full of high-achievers, and to study at Girton, the first women’s college in the UK. She majored in math and came out at the top of her class… but unfortunately, that didn’t count for much back then. Women weren't allowed to get degrees, and they rarely worked in science. So Annie didn’t really have any prospects of getting a job as an astronomer. 

But then, shortly after she graduated, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich started hiring what they called lady computers. These were highly qualified women filling the lowest-ranking roles at the observatory — taking observations and crunching numbers… It was not a glamorous position. But Annie was excited to have any chance to work as an astronomer, so she begged for a job there. And in 1891, she got it.

Silvia Dalla: She was employed as a lady computer, and in fact, this is one of the first times that women were employed professionally in astronomy.

Laura Gómez: That’s Silvia Dalla, a professor of solar physics at the University of Central Lancashire. She’s long been interested in Annie and the part she played in the history of their shared field.

Silvia Dalla: Her job was to take–every day–a photograph of the Sun, weather permitting, and to analyze this data and record all the information connected to sunspots.

Lyndsay Fletcher: And Annie Maunder took a pay cut, an enormous pay cut, when she joined the lady computers at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. 

Laura Gómez: That’s Lyndsay Fletcher, from the University of Glasgow. She’s a solar physicist too, and a colleague of Silvia’s. 

Lyndsay Fletcher: But obviously she wanted this job so much that she was prepared to live in penury to be able to do it.

Laura Gómez: And in a way, Lyndsay can understand why she did it. It was an exciting time to be studying the Sun. 

Lyndsay Fletcher: People really didn't know very much about the Sun at that time at all. They had only just decided–kind of in the middle of the 19th century–that the surface of the Sun was gaseous, rather than a liquid or a solid. They didn’t know what sunspots were, so they were looking at their shapes, at their motions on the surface of the Sun, you know, in a bid to try and understand what they were looking at.

Laura Gómez: There were so many mysteries to get to the bottom of. But unfortunately, the arrangement didn't end up lasting long for Annie. In 1865…

Silvia Dalla: She married Walter Maunder, who was also working at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, and she had to leave her job because there was a rule in the civil service at the time that married women could not be employed.

Laura Gómez: Silvia again. Technically that marriage ban wouldn't have applied to the kind of job Annie had… but she left it anyway. Perhaps because she had just acquired five stepchildren from Walter’s previous marriage and had her hands full… or because that’s just what women did back then. Either way, her life was suddenly very different. But somehow, even though she formally quit her job and now had a home bustling with children… she still found time to go to the observatory.

Silvia Dalla: In practice, she never stopped doing, doing research throughout her life. Walter was working at the Royal Observatory, so he had access to the photographs of the Sun and all the data. So together, they did a lot of research.

Laura Gómez: The only difference was that, this time, Annie wasn’t getting paid a penny. All she got was the chance to be a scientist and study the Sun herself… 

At the time, astronomers were intrigued by some odd links between the Sun and Earth. There were times when telegraph communications would mysteriously go dark, and these just so happened to line up with times when the Sun had an unusual number of dark spots. Auroras, also known as the northern and southern lights, were more common around these times too. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence. So people like Annie wanted to understand the Sun better and see what this was all about. But it’s really hard to study the Sun, because its whole outer layer, called the corona, gets washed out by the brightness of the Sun. Except for on a few special occasions when the Moon blots out the Sun… and causes an eclipse. Here’s Lyndsay.

Lyndsay Fletcher: If you went to many, many eclipses, it turned out that the corona had a different shape. You know, it's not just a round cloud, it’s got rays and blobs and so on. 

Laura Gómez: During an eclipse, the moon passes right in front of the Sun. It happens to fit right over the Sun, like a lens cap. So it blocks out the Sun itself, but it doesn’t block all the wispy stuff around it.

So, eclipses an incredible time to study the Sun, even today. The only problem is, we get at most five solar eclipses somewhere on Earth every year. And they're not all total eclipses; also, a bunch of them happen over the ocean… So, long story short, you can't just sit around and wait for a total eclipse to come to you. If you want to see one, you have to chase it.

And in 1898, when an eclipse was set to pass over India, Annie decided to do just that. 

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Laura Gómez: On December 8th, 1897, Annie and Walter head to the port of London and get on a steamship called the RMS Ballarat with three other astronomers. They've decided to see the eclipse with an amateur group called the British Astronomical Association, which Walter helped found in 1890. Both of them have to pay their own way, but to them, it's worth it. A total of 20 astronomers will be traveling to India as part of this expedition, but the group had trouble figuring out travel arrangements. They've had to split up so they can get a ride to India on mail shipping steamers.

Annie, Walter, and three other men are the first to leave. A second party will follow, two weeks later. As the group boards the ship, they carry telescopes, cameras, and other instruments that they've been carefully assembling for the occasion. But for all their careful planning, they've encountered one major problem that no one could foresee. There's a plague in India. They've just gotten wo rd that the town where they plan to set up camp isn't safe anymore. So they don't know where they're going. But they have to leave. So Annie and Walter and their traveling companions set off from London while their contacts in England and India scramble to figure out a plan B. 

The journey will take nearly a month, and it gets off to a rough start. Shortly after they leave, they pass through a severe storm in the bay of Biscay, off the coast of France. But after they round the tip of Portugal into the Mediterranean sea, it's smooth sailing. Annie and her companions take advantage of this time at sea to study the sky. During the day, they notice a cluster of dark spots on the Sun. Every evening, they look for Mercury at twilight. And as darkness falls, they watch the Milky Way blossom out of the deep black sky. 

As the days pass and the ship continues south through the Red Sea, they notice new constellations appear in the sky. And then finally, on January 3rd, after nearly a month at sea, the steamship arrives in the port at Mumbai. Annie’s group learns that arrangements have been made for them to set up camp in a town called Talni, a few hundred miles east of Mumbai. So two days later, they board a late night train and head east. They ride through the mountains under a nearly full moon. By daytime, the landscape has transformed into a flat dusty plane. It's mid afternoon by the time they finally reached Talni, a small village with mud huts and narrow roads. When the astronomers get off the train, a couple of ox-drawn carts are waiting for them. They climb in and ride just over a mile to their campsite. 

In just two days, local workers have prepared an entire little observing village just for this occasion. 

They've cleared a dozen or so acres of a field and set up four small bamboo huts to be used as observing stations. They've even poured cement floors. Down a short path, they've set up sleeping tents in a shady grove of mango and tamarind trees. Each tent even has a lamppost, so astronomers can safely move around at night. The whole site is guarded by an officer with a sword who paces back and forth. This will be the group's home for the next three weeks.

The eclipse is still two and a half weeks away, but the astronomers spend most of that time getting ready. After all, they've taken this whole journey to witness a moment that will be over in just two minutes. So Annie and her fellow astronomers only have one shot to get everything right. 

By the day of the eclipse, a number of other people, who've been involved in arranging the expedition, join their camp along with more officers guarding the perimeter. Just before noon, the Moon takes its first bite out of the Sun. Annie and the others wait inside their huts as the Moon inches across the Sun. The thin rays of light that leak through their bamboo roofs project crescents onto the ground. The temperature falls as the surroundings dim and the colors fade. As the Sun shrinks to a sliver, Annie and her fellow astronomers get ready. At last, darkness falls. Where the Sun was just moments ago, there now appears to be a hole in the sky. In the distance, they hear the cries and wails of people in Talni. They're in totality. 

With the Moon completely blocking the Sun, the astronomers start exposing their photographic plates. They have just two minutes. 

One member of the camp watches an eclipse clock and counts down the seconds remaining. Annie takes a series of pictures with different exposures to try to capture features with a range of different brightnesses. Then, just as the Sun is emerging once more from behind the Moon, Annie takes one final photo. Then daylight returns, and it's over. 

The astronomers pack up their telescopes and their cameras. They'll have to wait to see what they've captured. That's after the break.

[BREAK]

Laura Gómez: Weeks after the eclipse, Annie was back in London, developing her photos. And going through them, she found something remarkable: In her final photo, a long tendril snaked from the Sun’s corona all the way to the edge of the frame. Annie had a hunch that she’d captured that mysterious connection between Sun and Earth: a stream of particles flowing from a stormy spot on the Sun and traveling millions of miles toward our planet. And all these years later, we know that she was exactly right.

In the years that followed, Annie continued chasing eclipses around the world. She went to Algeria, Mauritius, and Canada, funding all but the last trip herself. And she took fascinating photos that often rivaled the ones by professionals. 

Between these expeditions, she kept photographing the Sun from the Royal Observatory. And after decades of this, she and Walter published a stunning plot called the butterfly diagram. It showed the positions of sunspots year after year and revealed that the Sun goes through an 11-year-cycle. It was an incredible discovery, and it was only possible because Annie had been watching and documenting the Sun for most of her life.

But despite her long career, Annie Maunder never got to be more than an amateur herself. Not because she wasn’t capable or qualified, but because she was largely unpaid and she never got a professional degree. And in her day, that mattered more than it used to. Here’s Lyndsay Fletcher:

Lyndsay Fletcher: The way that science was becoming professionalized, from the middle of the 19th century onwards, it became a professional endeavor. You know, there was a time when science was carried out by amateurs and then it evolved to being something that has a degree, and that was to the detriment of male scientists as well as women scientists, but maybe women scientists in particular.

Laura Gómez: And so, even while she was alive, Annie largely faded into the background. Some of the work she did with her husband got published solely under his name. When they went to astronomical meetings, he was typically the one presenting their shared work. And when Annie died in 1947, her legacy quickly got buried. Today, most astronomers probably wouldn't know her name. Even Silvia Dalla, who works in Annie’s field, was well into her career before she came across it.

Silvia Dalla: When I found out about her, in a way I was kind of surprised. You know, we always talk about women who are involved in research now, as if it's a recent thing, but the important message, I believe, is that women have been doing science for a very, very long time. 

Laura Gómez: It’s true, and it’s why we’re here, unearthing their stories on this podcast. 

What I find inspiring about Annie’s story is that she never let herself be defined by the label of amateur. She simply did the work she wanted to do, and she made genuinely important contributions to our understanding of the Sun. Annie believed anyone could be a scientist. Of course, we don't all have access to the Royal Observatory or the means to travel across the world for an eclipse… but Annie felt that being an astronomer was simpler than that. Here’s how she put it herself, in her book, The Heavens and Their Story.

The heavens are telling stories of interest, stories of wonder, if we but have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. It is not necessary to be a rich man and to build a great observatory in order to become an astronomer. There were great astronomers before ever the telescope was invented. There have been astronomers even in our own days. There are some still living, whose work needs no other instrument than their eyes. 

Laura Gómez: This episode of Lost Women of Science was originally produced in English, by Samia Bouzid. 

Samia also adapted the version that you heard today, and I translated it to Spanish. David De Luca adapted the sound design. Our associate producer was Natalia Sánchez Loayza, and our senior managing producer was Deborah Unger. 

Our co-executive producers are Amy Scharf and Katie Hafner. Our program manager is Eowyn Burtner.

The original episode was co-hosted by Katie Hafner and Samia Bouzid, who was also the original sound designer. 

Lizzy Younan composed all of our music. Our fact checker was Lexi Atiya.

Special thanks to Jeff DelViscio at our publishing partner, Scientific American. 

Lost Women of Science is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation. We're distributed by PRX. 

You can find more information and a transcript of this episode at lostwomenofscience.org. I’m your host, Laura Gómez. Thanks for listening.

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