--- title: Annie Jump Cannon Google Doodle Honors Astronomer description: The astronomer classifyied the stars would have been 151 today canonical: https://time.com/3629793/annie-jump-cannon-google-doodle/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-11T15:34:49.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:27.003Z og:title: Annie Jump Cannon Google Doodle Honors Astronomer og:description: The astronomer classifyied the stars would have been 151 today og:url: https://time.com/3629793/annie-jump-cannon-google-doodle/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5145270f57c51efe/69876e3255a85934fba84ac4/annie-jump-cannon.png?branch=production&width=601&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 601 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: annie-jump-cannon og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Annie Jump Cannon Google Doodle Honors Astronomer twitter:description: The astronomer classifyied the stars would have been 151 today twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5145270f57c51efe/69876e3255a85934fba84ac4/annie-jump-cannon.png?branch=production&width=601&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google Doodle Honors Astronomer Annie Jump Cannon > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Dec 11, 2014 3:34 PM UTC   by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Dec 11, 2014 3:34 PM UTC Today’s Google Doodle honors Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), a leading female astronomer who is known for her work classifying the stars based on their stellar spectra. Nicknamed the [“Census Taker of the Sky,”](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,772719,00.html) the Wellesley graduate who worked at Harvard’s Observatory was the first woman to receive [an honorary degree](http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hua12001) from Oxford University (a Doctor of Science), and the first woman to be [awarded](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,753160,00.html) the National Academy of Sciences’s Henry Draper medal for research in astronomical physics. She also curated the observatory’s “photographic plates of the heavens,” [described](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,929866,00.html) in a March 28, 1932, TIME article as “a permanent record of things understood or obscure beyond the night” and “a towering compendium of dots and streaks in photographic gelatine which, to the theoretical physicist, suggest the whence and the whither of all things.” Cannon was credited for cataloging 400,000 stellar bodies and “discovering more than 300 variable stars, 5 novae, and one spectroscopic binary”(according to Harvard’s library) before she died at age 77. ### See Google Doodles Through the Years  Aug. 26, 2015 For the 70th anniversary of La Tomatina. Google  May 26, 2015 In celebration of the 64th birthday of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Google  March 31, 2015 Honoring the 126th anniversary of the public opening of the Eiffel Tower. Google  Mar. 20, 2015 To celebrate the start of spring and the vernal equinox, Google created a stop-motion animation of flowers in bloom. Google  Nov. 12, 2014 For the landing of the Philae lander, the first spacecraft on a moving comet, Google created a gyrating lander with passing stars. Google  Sept. 9, 2014 For Tolstoy's 186th birthday, the Google Doodle team created an appropriately long click-through doodle. Google  May 27, 2014 For the Rachel Louise Carson doodle, the team surrounded her with birds and sea creatures to celebrate her 107th birthday. Google  May 4 2014 For Audrey Hepburn's 85th birthday, the doodle team adapted an image from a 1956 black and white photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh. Google  June 9, 2011 The doodlers came up with the idea of a playable logo, then pegged it to guitar innovator Les Paul's 96th birthday. Turning on composer mode allows you to create songs that you can share online. Google  March 24, 2011 The Harry Houdini doodle was created in the style of the old posters advertising the death-defying magician. Google  Nov. 25, 2010 Chef Ina Garten prepared this Thanksgiving feast, which Google photographed. If you clicked on a dish, her recipe appeared. Google  May 7, 2010 Google asked the San Francisco Ballet to pose and twirl to re-create Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Google  Oct. 7, 2009 Scan the doodle that marks the first patent for the bar code and you'll decode Google embedded within. Google  March 2, 2009 The doodlers arranged classic Dr. Seuss characters, like the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch, to form the logo's letters. Google  Jan. 28, 2009 There was no other way to honor abstract artist Jackson Pollack than with a chaotic drip painting. Google  Jan. 19, 2009 Guest artist Shepard Fairey (famed for his Obama HOPE poster) did a sketch for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Google  Jan. 28, 2008 Early on, Google used Lego blocks as casing for hard disks. Later it feted Lego's 50th anniversary. Google  April 22, 2007 A melting iceberg for Earth Day is one of many eco-minded doodles the team has created. Google  Jan. 4, 2006 Enter the world of out-there doodles — Google in braille. Only problem: you can't feel it. Google  March 30, 2005 The Van Gogh doodle appeared in an era when doodles began to get more ambitious, and it's one of the doodlers' best interpretations of a specific painter. Google  Aug. 13, 2003 Early doodles of famous folk tended to be simple, like this silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock. Google  March 14, 2003 The early doodles were often simple but playful, like this mustachioed drawing of Albert Einstein to celebrate his birthday. Google  Nov. 14, 2001 Google's first doodler, Dennis Hwang, gave the logo an Impressionist look for Claude Monet's birthday. Google  Aug. 30, 1998 When employees left for the Burning Man festival, the Google logo became a cryptic BE BACK LATER sign. "There was no master plan for doodles at that point," says doodler-in-chief Ryan Germick. Google _Read next:_ [_11 Google Tricks That Will Change the Way You Search_](http://time.com/3581399/google-search/?xid=time%5Freadnext) ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. 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