How would they know?
Child-facing pages tell the story. This page names the kinds of records behind it. Pictures of instruments and specimens on the investigations are generated interpretations, labeled as such. Diagrams are models.
The light that told us
Cecilia Payne, Stellar Atmospheres (1925 doctoral thesis). Henry Norris Russell, 1929 solar abundance work. Annie Jump Cannon’s Harvard spectral classification. Meghnad Saha’s ionization equation. American Museum of Natural History and Science History Institute biographies of Payne-Gaposchkin. Laboratory wavelengths for hydrogen Balmer lines are standard NIST values.
What lies beneath
Inge Lehmann, “P′” (1936). USGS explanations of P waves, S waves, and shadow zones. American Museum of Natural History and APS historical notes on the inner core. The layered picture is a model informed by travel times, not a photograph.
Traces in the stone
William Buckland’s 1824 Megalosaurus description. Richard Owen’s 1842 Dinosauria. Oxford University Museum of Natural History on Mary Anning’s marine reptiles (ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, not dinosaurs). Coprolite history via Anning and Buckland. Footprints as trace fossils are standard paleontology.
The still floor
Foucault pendulum, Paris, 1851. Stellar parallax: Friedrich Bessel, 61 Cygni, 1838. Day and night treated as underdetermined by themselves. Latitude dependence of the pendulum is the distinguishing observation for rotation.
The planet we couldn’t see
Mayor and Queloz, 1995, 51 Pegasi b (radial velocity). HD 209458 b: radial velocity in 1999, then independent transit detections by Charbonneau et al. and Henry et al., Astrophysical Journal, 2000. NASA Exoplanet Exploration on methods. One dip is not treated as a planet.
A match is not enough
Alfred Wegener’s continental drift (1912–1915) and the limits of his mechanism. Seafloor spreading: Hess, Dietz. Magnetic stripes: Vine, Matthews, Morley. USGS and open geology texts on plate tectonics as the later, better-supported framework. History is not told as heroes versus fools.