Famous Women Astronomers - Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell

The discovery of the first known pulsar was the event that made Bell Burnell famous. She was doing work for her PhD at the Mullard Radio Observatory just outside Cambridge. She chose to study the hot, new field of quasars, quasi-stellar objects, for her doctoral dissertation.   She was working with a radio telescope array that was designed by her advisor, Dr. Hewish. For 2 years she had helped build the grandly named Interplanetary Scintillation Array, or ISA, from 1965 to 1967.   The ISA’s a fixed array of thousands of 3.7 meter dipole antennas that can scan the entire northern sky as the Earth spins on its axis each day. The array was used in Tony Hewish’s research of scintillating quasars. These pulsar things were not what they were looking for, not even remotely on their radar!   The output of signals from the radio receiver was written on a strip of paper by a paper chart recorder, generating a huge amount of paper each day, as much as 29 meters!   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://astrogear.spreadshirt.com/ for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. http://www.astrosphere.org/ Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].