Nancy Houk facts for kids

Nancy Houk, born around 1940, is an American astronomer. She taught at the University of Michigan and has written many books and articles about space. Dr. Houk led a huge project for decades. This project created a massive collection of information about stars. It measured how hot stars are (their temperature) and how bright they shine (their luminosity).

Learning About Stars

Nancy Houk earned her first college degree from the University of Michigan. While studying there, she did research at the Maria Mitchell Observatory. This observatory is named after Maria Mitchell, who was America's first professional woman astronomer.

Dr. Houk then earned her Ph.D. in astronomy in 1967 from Case Western Reserve University. She continued her advanced studies there and also at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, she worked with Dr. Lukas Plaut for six months. They studied "variable stars," which are stars that change their brightness over time.

A Career in Astronomy

Nancy Houk joined the Astronomy Department at the University of Michigan in 1970. She started as a research associate and was promoted several times. She became a research scientist in 1985.

Mapping the Stars

Starting in 1971, Dr. Houk led a very important project. Her goal was to create a huge database of information about stars. This database included their temperatures and how bright they are. By 2014, this project had put together five large books. These books covered a big part of the sky, from the South Pole to a certain point in the northern sky. In total, the project collected data on 162,900 stars!

The images taken for this project gave scientists lots of details about stars. This included what elements they are made of, their size, how hot they are, how fast they spin, their age, and how far away they are. Dr. Houk used all this information to create a special chart. This chart is called the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. It's a fundamental tool that helps astronomers understand how stars live and change.

Dr. Houk was also the editor of the Michigan Spectral Catalog. Her important work was supported by money from the National Science Foundation.

Her Star Collection

Nancy Houk retired in 2001. In 2004, she gave half of her special photographic plates to the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive (APDA). These plates had surveyed the entire southern night sky.

The other half of her collection is kept in Japan. The APDA is located at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. There are plans to turn her photographic plates into digital files. This will make them easier for scientists around the world to study.

Nancy Houk transferring her collection to APDA in 2004. Michael Castelaz, the PARI Research Director at the time, accepted her collection.

See also

In Spanish: Nancy Houk para niños