Harvard Plate Stacks
| The Harvard Plate Stacks | |
|---|---|
| Mission statement | "to serve as a beacon of knowledge, preservation, and inclusivity, ensuring that the legacy of astrophotography and the pioneering women behind it continue to shine brightly for generations to come" |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of project | Educational research center and historic archival collection |
| Location | Cambridge, MA |
| Owner | Harvard College Observatory a member of The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian |
| Founder | Mary Anna Draper and Edward Charles Pickering |
| Established | 1880s |
| Website | platestacks |
The Harvard Plate Stacks, previously known as the Harvard College Observatory glass plate collection or the astronomical photographic glass plate collection, is a collection of astronomical glass plate negatives at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Created over more than a century by the Harvard College Observatory, it is widely described as the largest collection of astronomical glass plates in the world.
The collection includes more than 550,000 glass plate negatives dating from the 1870s to the late 1990s, as well as early photographic data from as early as 1849, and logbooks, notebooks, and photographic prints associated with astronomical research at Harvard and affiliated observing stations. It is one of the largest photographic collections at Harvard. Many of the astronomers, assistants, and computers who worked with the collection were women, including members of the group now commonly known as the Women Astronomical Computers.