Carolyn Shoemaker

It’s the birthday of astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker, born in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1929. She did not study the physical sciences in college; she received degrees in history and political science. In 1951 she married Gene Shoemaker, a geologist with a passion for astronomy who later established the US Geological Survey Center for Astrogeology in Arizona. It was there, after raising three kids, that Carolyn started using telescopes to discover asteroids and comets. She studied pairs of photographic plates taken at different times, searching for distinguishing features among the unchanging star field. She’d find one comet for every 100 hours or so of work. By 1994 Shoemaker had discovered 32 comets, more than any living astronomer at the time. Shoemaker’s most famous discovery, made along with her husband and David Levy in March 1993, was a comet in orbit around Jupiter. In July 1994 fragments of that comet, named Shoemaker-Levy 9, collided with Jupiter, creating vivid black scars in the giant planet’s atmosphere.

Date in History: 24 June 1929