Julena Steinheider Duncombe

She was known for her work as a teacher at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and as an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, where she made pioneering observations with the 6-inch transit circle, introduced the use of punched cards in cataloging stars and constructing tables of positions of celestial bodies, and led the production of eclipse predictions for almanacs.

[1][2] Julena Steinheider was born in Dorchester, Nebraska on September 21, 1911, the only daughter among five children of a farming family.

[1] She graduated in 1932 from Doane College with a degree in mathematics and a minor in astronomy.

[1][2][4] She began working for the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC in 1944,[2] and met her husband, astronomer Raynor L. Duncombe, there.

[1] Duncombe retired in 1973, and moved with her husband in 1975 to Austin, Texas, maintaining a second home in Highlands, North Carolina.

Julena Steinheider (far right) and two other staff members dining with interned newspaper editor Bill Hosokawa and his family at Heart Mountain
The 6-inch transit circle at the USNO. Although it had been built much earlier in 1898, Duncombe become the first woman to use it. [ 1 ]