Did you know that the stars in the night sky are mostly made of hydrogen and helium? You can thank Cecilia Payne for that groundbreaking discovery! Despite her work initially being dismissed by male colleagues, Cecilia Payne’s genius unlocked the secret composition of stars, reshaping our understanding of the universe.

But her journey wasn’t all starlight and brilliance, she had to fight against the odds as a woman in early 20th-century science. So, the next time you gaze at the stars and think "they are fireflies that got stuck up in that big bluish black thing", remember Cecilia Payne: astrophysicist, trailblazer, pioneer, and the woman who proved the stars are much more than just decorations in the sky.

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Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin
https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/43/1/1.27/203723?login=true
https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/cecilia-payne-profile
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6028/cecilia-paynegaposchkin-the-woman-who-first-grasped-the-elemental-power-of-stars/

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