The Harvard Plate Stacks is the Harvard College Observatory's Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection and is the most extensive collection of its kind in the world. The collection spans over 550,000 glass plate negatives and spectral images, covering both the northern and southern hemispheres. The Harvard Plate Stacks make up over a century of irreplaceable scientific observations and represent the first full image of the visible Universe. Hundreds of women studied and curated the Harvard Plate Stacks while making discoveries of their own, but their work often went unrecognized. The Harvard Plate Stacks and The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is dedicated to understanding and undoing the erasure of these women’s contributions while advancing and enabling the creation of new knowledge using the Harvard Plate Stacks Collection.
