The Harvard Plate Stacks

Black and white image of Orion's belt and horsehead nebula
Section of plate B2312 (1888) showing Orion's belt and the horsehead nebula.
 

The Harvard Plate Stacks is the Harvard College Observatory's Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection and is the largest collection of its kind in the world. The core of the collection was founded with the generious funding of Anna Palmer Draper and the creation of the Henery Draper Memorial collection in 1886. Now the collection spans over 550,000 glass plate negatives and spectral images, covering both the northern and southern hemispheres. The Harvard Plate Stacks make up over a century of irreplaceable scientific observations and represent the first full image of the visible Universe. Hundreds of women studied and curated the Harvard Plate Stacks while making discoveries of their own, but more often than not their work went unrecognized. The Harvard Plate Stacks and The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is dedicated to understanding and undoing the erasure of these women’s contributions while advancing and enabling the creation of new knowledge using the Harvard Plate Stacks Collection.

 

 

 

Explore the Plate Stacks