S01.E08: Sisters Of The Sun

[Tara Ariano]

A spotlight on the work of female astronomers, including Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), who cataloged stars by class, and Cecilia Payne (1900-79), who calculated the chemical compositions of stars. Also: an exploration of the lives and deaths of stars; and a visit to the planet of a star orbiting a globular cluster.

[Rhetorica]

Finally! Women!

[Cress]

Yes, it's about freaking time! There's a clip over at the Mary Sue with more information.

[Cress]

I found the episode pretty meh. They didn't spend that long on the women; we didn't get detailed bios on them from their childhoods like we did with Isaac Newton or Herschel, and then the rest of the episode was discussing the stars, and didn't mention the women again until the very end. It felt like just a token mention of women, and if this is all we're getting in all these episodes, then it's a huge disappointment.

[Joystickenvy]

From the "deeper dive" segment it sounded like they were only able to find very limited information, so the whole childhood stuff might not have been available, which honestly, is fine by me.

I'm more interested in the science than the scientists. I guess I'm not a very good feminist in that I'm not overly vexed by the number of women they have featured either.

The first half of the episode kinda drug for me, but I found the second half more interesting, though some of the themes....black holes, we're made of star stuff etc are starting to feel repetitious. I guess that's going to happen in this kinda of non-sequential mish mash of topics, but given the broad strokes, I'd like them to branch out a bit more.

[Cress]

I totally didn't care about Herschel the boy having walks on the beach with his father, yet Cosmos dragged out those scenes and emphasized the father/son relationship as if it was everything (while totally ignoring Herschel's sister Caroline). I didn't care about that boy who worked in the factory making lenses, yet Cosmos devoted time to that, and Neil talked reverently about him like he was a special hero. The Patterson episode needlessly repeated the scenes of Patterson freaking out about lead, and the first guy in the first episode wasn't a scientist at all; he was a religious guy preaching about an infinite universe. What did that have to do with the history of science?

 

It took them 8 episodes to feature any women scientists at all. Yet Neil has the nerve to say about the women in this episode, "You've probably never heard of them. I wonder why?" The writers are such hypocrites, spending seven episodes hero-worshipping men in detail while ignoring any women scientists. If we'd had occasional mentions of women sprinkled in the earlier 7 episodes, I wouldn't be annoyed, but it was like women scientists didn't exist before. How is it they can have huge amounts of information about male scientists from hundreds of years ago, but they don't have anything on three women scientists of the 20th century? And these three women get maybe five or ten minutes split between them? And like you said, Neil was repeating stuff about how everything's made of stars that we've heard already. It felt like this episode was barely devoted to the women at all.

[Joystickenvy]

The organization of the episodes seems a bit non-sensical to me. For example, I think it would have made more sense to talk about the work that was used in determining the composition of stars, size/age of the galaxy, etc in the earlier episode that also touched on those subjects. It also would have made more sense to talk about how black holes are formed in the episode that talked about black holes.

The way they seem to be trying to centralize around themes or specific scientists is making for some awkward and repetitious story telling. The Tardigrades are another example where they explained the same thing more than once. And then there's the ever present theme of science vs authority, which while important and all is getting a bit anvilish. I wonder if the episodes were shot this way or if they filmed segments about topics and people and events and cobbled them together to fit the themes.

I don't know if this mirrors the original show, but if they were to do a second season I'd prefer they depart from that format and do less historical stuff.....maybe include it online for those who want to look it up, less ship of the imagination, drop the themes and focus on more cohesive topics.....maybe give us bits and pieces on the scientists whose work touches a lot of topics, but keep the focus on the cosmos instead of the people studying it. But that's just my personal preference. I probably wouldn't have tuned in if the show was called "the scientists."

[muddywaters]

I haven't seen all the episodes yet, but so far this was my favorite.  I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't known about these women, but I'm so glad to know now.  I liked how the second half of the episode showed us how much we've learned and know about the universe, thanks in large part to these "computers."

 

My only problem was Marlee Matlin voicing Annie Jump Cannon; it seemed a little gimmicky.  But on thinking about it, I can't think of anything else they could have done.  Obviously they couldn't voice her with a "hearing" person's voice.  So, it's just me.  They did the right thing.  Maybe I'm still annoyed with Matlin for What the #$*! Do We Know!? ... but maybe she's made up for that now. :-)

[samuel]

For what it's worth, I don't know who Marlee Matlin is (well, obviously now I know she's a deaf actress), but I remember thinking they did a good job with that voice casting when I heard it.

Edited April 30, 2014 by samuel

[Joystickenvy]

I loved her on Picket Fences, but haven't seen most of the stuff she's more known for. She's done some voice work for McFarlane before, so not surprising they'd use her here. I expect a lot of the voice acting is coming from the animation domination stable.

[futurechemist]

The organization of the episodes seems a bit non-sensical to me. For example, I think it would have made more sense to talk about the work that was used in determining the composition of stars, size/age of the galaxy, etc in the earlier episode that also touched on those subjects. It also would have made more sense to talk about how black holes are formed in the episode that talked about black holes.

The way they seem to be trying to centralize around themes or specific scientists is making for some awkward and repetitious story telling. The Tardigrades are another example where they explained the same thing more than once. And then there's the ever present theme of science vs authority, which while important and all is getting a bit anvilish. I wonder if the episodes were shot this way or if they filmed segments about topics and people and events and cobbled them together to fit the themes.

I don't know if this mirrors the original show, but if they were to do a second season I'd prefer they depart from that format and do less historical stuff.....maybe include it online for those who want to look it up, less ship of the imagination, drop the themes and focus on more cohesive topics.....maybe give us bits and pieces on the scientists whose work touches a lot of topics, but keep the focus on the cosmos instead of the people studying it. But that's just my personal preference. I probably wouldn't have tuned in if the show was called "the scientists."

I agree.  Maybe it's because they want to make each episode standalone instead of requiring people to watch every episode?  But in this episode it was jarring.  In the light episode, they spent a good amount of time talking about how sunlight is like a "bar code" for what elements the Sun contains.  And then they went over it again in this episode.  I thought they should have just presented the star compositions more quickly and moved on to other topics.  Like how we know the stars in a single constellation aren't the same distance away.  Or how supernovas are pretty much the only way to make elements heavier than iron and nickel that we see on Earth.

 

I did think it was nice that they focused on female scientists.  Next up should be minority scientists.  It's been a parade of white men for most of these episodes.

[muddywaters]

Too many white men in Cosmos.  I'll bet that's the last thing Tyson ever thought anyone would say.

[TeeVeeStevie]

I wasn't familiar with Cecilia Payne or Pickering's women, but then I wasn't familiar with Pickering either, and he was the main scientist of the group. The women were just assistants he'd hired to process astronomical data. And Payne was given full credit for her discovery as soon as it was recognized to be correct, so no controversy there.

 

The series has mentioned other male scientists that I'd never heard of before either, and I even recall DeGrasse-Tyson pointing out in some cases that they were unheralded, but he didn't cap it with the accusatory and ludicrous "I wonder why."

 

I wish this show would just stick to the historical and scientific facts, and lay off the heavy handed political messages.

[Cress]

Actually I think Neil was accusatory one time. He was describing the Oort cloud, then the male scientist that the cloud was named after. Then Neil said something like, "What does it say about our society that we know the names of serial killers, but we've never heard of Oort?" So that was definitely judgmental.

 

I don't think he can get away with "I wonder why" about the women since his own show has been silent on women until this point.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Cress

[muddywaters]

Here's a take on this episode by the incredibly awesome astronomer Carolyn Porco:

 

The last two episodes of Cosmos were glorious and actually made me look at myself differently.

 

Being more scientist than historian, I never knew of Cecilia Payne. And now I discover she, too, said this:

 

"The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience… " http://bit.ly/RluzQq

 

So true, Cecilia. So true.

 

And I never knew of Marie Tharp, either. It's telling that I was educated in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech, had certainly heard in reverent tones the story of Alfred Wegener, but had never even heard the name of Tharp.

 

Many grateful thanks to Ann Druyan, Steve Soter, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the Cosmos crew for bringing to light the stories of these women greats of astronomical and geological history.

 

And to my fellow female scientists, I hope you now see yourselves differently, too. You and I are part of a fine & noble lineage. Walk tall and proud forevermore.

 

 

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