19th-Century Lady Astronomer And Her Pet Telescope

"Rose O'Halloran, the woman astronomer, and her pet telescope."
 March 10, 1895 issue of San Francisco Call
from the Chronicling America website.

My eyeglasses' prescription has changed. To find the "right" pair of spectacles I am making a spectacle of myself because I have various vain and perimenopausal demands when it comes to "face jewelry" aka glasses because #faceavalanche.

All I want is simplicity itself: in defiance of physics, that the glasses make my face defy gravity.

Farewell, Dame Edna. Up up up with your face.

Sporting the eyewear that makes you look younger is clickbait I recently clicked on. Direct quote: "You can use your eyeglass not just to improve your vision but also to enhance your look." Eyeglass.

Spyglass.

"One of Miss O'Halloran's Astronomy Classes"
                           Image is from the April 8, 1894 issue of the San Francisco Chroniclecourtesy of the San Francisco Public Library

What would 19th-century astronomer Rose O'Halloran, "woman astronomer and her pet telescope," have thought of my wish to look a certain way? Surely fluff. She had better things to fuss about than face jewelry; the dominant paradigm to upset, as a woman in Victorian science.

O'Halloran studied the Sun. She made maps of 70 sunspots and was "an ardent student of other stars," too. LPVs, long period variable stars.

When I read that I thought not, What an amazing woman! but, Long period variable is exactly what's happening to my cycle. (Sorry, manfans. This is a situation that will encountered by many of your ladyfriends should we live long enough to become dowagers and those marvelous nonna elephants that lead the herd.)

"Look up, toward the Heavens' celestial bodies," I think O'Halloran would have said like Mrs. Who in A Wrinkle in Time. "Use your new Dame Edna lookalike glasses to consider distances farther than your own navel, honey. Use them as your pet telescope."

There is more to the sight than is seen.