Benjamin Banneker (1731 - 1806) - authored one of the first series of almanacs accurately predicting the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868 - 1921) - determined the distance of Cepheid stars
Annie Jump Cannon (1863 - 1941) - created the Harvard classification system of stars
Dr. Vera Rubin (1928 - 2016) - discovered dark matter
Al-Battani (850 - 929) - determined the length of a solar year
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943 - ) - discovered pulsar stars
Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (903 - 986) - first to describe the Andromeda galaxy
Aristarchus (310 BCE - 230 BCE) - proposed a geocentric solar system before Copernicus
Ole Roemer (1644 - 1710) - calculated the speed of light
Dr. Arthur Bertram Cuthbert Walker II (1936 - 2001) - developed x-ray and ultraviolet telescopes used to capture the first detailed photogaphs of the Sun's corona
Dr. Harvey Washington Banks (1923 - 1979) - first African American scientist to earn a doctorate in astronomy
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910 - 1995) - determined the mass of white dwarfs
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784 - 1846) - first to calculate the distance to a star
Dr. Beth A. Brown (1969 - 2008) - NASA astrophysicist who specialized in black holes and x-ray radiation from galaxies
Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. (1942 - ) - first African American astronaut to fly in space
Charles F. Bolden Jr. (1946 - ) - astronaut and first African American administrator of NASA
Dr. Bernard Harris Jr (1956 - ) - first African American to walk in space
Frederick Gregory (1941 - ) - first African American to pilot a space shuttle
Dr. Mae Jemison (1956 - ) - first African American woman in space
Dr. Ronald E. McNair (1950 - 1986) - African American astronaut aboard the Challenger space shuttle
Michael P. Anderson (1959 - 2003) - African American astronaut aboard the Columbia space shuttle
Leland Melvin (1964 - ) - African American astronaut and former professional football player
Katherine Johnson (1918 - 2020) - NASA mathematician whose calculations were essential to the success of America's spaceflights
Nancy Grace Roman (1925 - 2018) - first female executive at NASA and instrumental in launching the Hubble Space Telescope
Asaph Hall (1829 - 1907) - discovered Mars' moons