Google's homepage doodle today is celebrating the 195th birthday of astronomer Maria Mitchell, the first professional female astronomer in the U.S.

Mitchell is featured perched on a roof at night, peering through a telescope at passing comets and stars. It's fitting since Mitchell is known for discovering a comet in 1847 at age 29.

As the National Women's History Museum (NWHM) noted, the discovery is noteworthy because Mitchell "used a mere two-inch telescope, which illustrates her true skill as an astronomer."

At the time, Mitchell was "sweeping the sky from the roof of the Pacific National Bank on Main Street, where her father was a cashier, [and] spotted a small blurry object that did not appear on her charts," according to the Maria Mitchell Association.

Mitchell reportedly had to battle an Italian man who also claimed to have discovered the comet, but she ultimately prevailed. It was named "Miss Mitchell's Comet" and appeared in Elias Loomis's The Recent Progress of Astronomy, the NWHM said. The accomplishment earned her a place in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848, the first woman to accomplish this feat and the group's only female member for almost a century.

Beyond astronomy, Mitchell was also an active anti-slavery and women's rights activist, eventually co-founding the American Association for the Advancement of Women. But she continued her scientific studies at Vassar College, where she became the college's only female faculty member in 1865.

Mitchell retired from Vassar in 1888 and died a year later. The Maria Mitchell Association was established in 1902 and her home on Nantucket is now open to visitors.

For more of Google's doodles, see the slideshow below. Recently, the search giant has honored Rembrandt van Rijn, the Roswell UFO incident, architect Antoni Gaudí, author Maurice Sendak, Julius Richard Petri, graphic designer Saul Bass, Ella Fitzgerald, and Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to clarify that Mitchell co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women, not the AAUW.