Silent Sky

Silent Sky is a play by Lauren Gunderson that tells the story of pioneering astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt and explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific and heart-bound discoveries.  With music and math bursting forth onstage, Henrietta and her female peers change how we understand the heavens and Earth.  Join us as we celebrate her life and legacy with this intimate and magical play performed inside the Kendall Planetarium.  Directed by Joellen Sweeney, the performance includes stunning celestial visuals designed by OMSI Planetarium director, Jim Todd, and music by Jenny Giering performed live by pianist Jesse Preis.

A decade before women gained the right to vote, Henrietta Leavitt and her fellow women “computers” transformed the science of astronomy.  In the Harvard Observatory, Leavitt found 2,400 new variable stars and made important discoveries about their fluctuating brightness, enabling fellow scientists to map the Milky Way and…