Helen Lines

Helen Chambliss Williams Lines (July 13, 1918 – January 29, 2001) was an American amateur astronomer. In her beginnings she was a deep-sky observer and astrophotographer.

Astronomy

In 1969, Lines was one of early members of the Phoenix Astronomical Society.^[1] Lines was a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. She and her husband, civil engineer Richard D. Lines,^[2] built a small observatory in Mayer, Arizona,^[3] and wrote about its construction for Sky & Telescope.^[4] In 1992 they won the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for their work in the field of photoelectric photometry of variable stars.^[5] She was a co-author on two scientific papers published in the mid-1990s.^[6][7]

Publications

• "A New Amateur Observatory in Central Arizona" (1968, with Richard D. Lines)^[4]
• "UBVRI photometry of the recurrent nova T coronae borealis" (1988, with Richard D. Lines and Thomas G. McFaul)^[8]
• "Evolution of starspots in the long-period RS CVN binary V1817 Cygni = HR 7428" (1990, with Richard D. Lines, Douglas S. Hall, and Susan E. Gessner)^[9]
• "The Two Variables in The Triple System HR 6469=V819 Her: One Eclipsing, One Spotted" (1994, with 16 other authors)^[6]
• "Starspots Found on the Ellipsoidal Variable V350 Lacertae = HR 8575" (1995, with 5 other authors)^[7]

Personal life

Helen Chambliss Williams was born in Forrest City, Arkansas, the daughter of Russell Williams and Sadie Borden Williams. Her father was the chief of police in Forrest City.^[10] She married Richard Damon Lines in 1936. They had a daughter, Chambliss. Richard Lines died in 1992,^[11] and Helen Lines died in 2001, aged 82 years, in Searcy, Arkansas.