She started as her uncle Edward Emerson Barnard's assistant and ended publishing his (and their) work that cataloged over 300 dark objects (dark nebulae) — primarily those that extinguish the most starlight reaching the Earth lie between the bulk (inward local sector, central bulge, and other sectors of the Milky Way) thus between the Local Arm (Orion Arm) and the Sagittarius Arm.

Photography Studio above the United Cigar Store at the southeast corner of 4th and Union Streets in Nashville.

[2] In 1905, she started work at Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin, as assistant and computer for her uncle[3] who was also professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago.

[4] In 1923, when Barnard died, she became curator of the Yerkes photographic plate collection and a high-level assistant, until her retirement in 1946.

[5] Barnard's work A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way was completed after his death in 1923 by Edwin B.