Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) was the first person to earn a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University. Her 1925 graduate thesis first proposed that the Sun and other stars were made predominantly of hydrogen, and it has been described as "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy". Her legacy looms large over all of modern astrophysics. (Read about it!)

Like many scientists, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was also an avid crafter. In collaboration with colleague John Whitman, she rendered this early X-ray image of the supernova remnant Cassopeia-A in 1976 using yarn and needlepoint. We can make similar maps with a few lines of code, but what more do we learn or discover or wonder when we craft things ourselves? How closely did Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin get to know this X-ray dataset, by carefully stitching it pixel by pixel? What value is brought to scientific exploration by artistic approaches to observing and knowing?