Maria Mitchell
The Girl Who Studied the Stars It was an eventful day in the Mitchell home. The parlor window had been taken out and the telescope mounted in front of it. Twelve-year-old Maria, at her father’s side, counted the seconds while he observed a total eclipse of the sun. Not every twelve-year-old girl could be trusted to use the chronometer, an instrument which measures the time even more accurately than a watch. Maria, however, had been helping her father in his study of the stars ever since she could count. Before many years this little girl beside the telescope became America’s best-known woman astronomer.