Shoemaker, Carolyn (1929-2021), was an American astronomer. Shoemaker began a career in astronomy at age 51. She worked with her husband, the American geologist and astronomer Gene Shoemaker, to identify and track comets and asteroids.
Carolyn Jean Spellman was born June 24, 1929, in Gallup, New Mexico. In 1950, she graduated from Chico State College (now California State University, Chico) with a master’s degree in history and political science. She met Gene Shoemaker in 1950. The two corresponded by mail while she taught seventh grade in California and he studied at Princeton University in New Jersey. They married in 1951. Carolyn became a homemaker and raised their three children.
In 1980, Carolyn joined her husband in searching for comets and asteroids. Despite having no formal training or science degree, she discovered 32 comets and 377 asteroids. To discover new comets and asteroids, Shoemaker scanned photographic film in a device called a stereomicroscope. The stereomicroscope would display a different photograph of the same patch of sky in each eyepiece. Objects captured in both pieces of film would appear as normal. Objects captured in only one of the pieces of film, however, would appear to float above the image. For every 100 hours Shoemaker spent studying the film, she might find a single comet. Working with the Canadian-born American astronomer David H. Levy, the couple discovered the first comet observed to orbit a body other than the sun, later named Shoemaker-Levy 9. First discovered in 1993 orbiting Jupiter, Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into the planet in 1994.
Shoemaker died on Aug. 13, 2021. Asteroid 4446 Carolyn is named in honor of Shoemaker. It is an outer main-belt asteroid about 29 kilometers (about 18 miles) in diameter.
