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The Astronomer Who Brought Us the Universe
StartsWithABang writes If all we were able to do was look up at the sky and see what we can see, no matter how powerful our instruments became, we would be extraordinarily limited in what we could learn about the Universe. But if we could know some intrinsic properties about what we were looking at, then simply by measuring things like how bright these objects appear, we could figure out the cosmic distance scale; all it would require is knowledge of a "distance indicator" or "standard candle." The very first one ever discovered — by Henrietta Leavitt — is not only still in use today, but taught us the galactic nature of the spiral nebulae and gave us the expanding Universe.
Well, here's where you open yourself up. Distance measurements benefit from longer baselines. The biggest one we have now is about 2AU wide. Take a picture now, wait 6 months, take a picture again when the earth is on the opposite side of the sun. If we have a base on mars, we can have a slightly wider baseline with earth and mars on opposite sides of the sun for a simultaneous measurement (can't do that now at all) and two martian orbital radii for non-simulataneous measurements about a year apart.
Now you might say: well why can't we do this with a remote probe? And the answer is, of course we can, but it's damn near impossible to be flexible if you launch a satellite into space where you can't get at it to change instruments or reconfigure it. And big mirrors in space aren't anywhere near as easy as big mirrors on the ground. That's why we still build billion-dollar telescopes on the ground, even though we launch billion-dollar telescopes into space. If you had an actual base on mars, with support staff and manufacturing capacity of the sort needed to maintain a remote outpost, you can now have astronomical instrumentation that costs just as much as a space-based platform or a little more, but is worth dozens of space telescopes because it's manned and has the magical property of reconfigurability, repairability, and flexibility in software as well as hardware. So yes, you can do things with manned systems that you cannot do with unmanned systems, especially when you're doing science.
yes, I'm sure she worked in complete isolation, and developed everything by herself.
No, she was a part of a group consisting entirely of women under the management of Edward Pickering at Harvard Observatory, called at the time "Pickering's Harem" Despite her groundbreaking accomplishments, Leavitt was unable to obtain a faculty position at Harvard, entirely due to her gender.
Times have changed a lot since then, despite the efforts of ignorant douchebags like you.