when bardwell was not teaching, she was watching the sky for celestial events. in a volume of the "sidereal messenger", she published her observations of a meteor shower radiating from the constellation andromeda. she also published detailed observations of the leonid meteor shower, including a chart of the leonid radiant in "popular astronomy". while these observations were not new discoveries, they helped confirm which radiants meteors originated from. in 1880, bardwell oversaw the building of the john payson williston observatory where she would be the director until her death.