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Greetings!
Fall approaches, and VOF outreach activities in the spring and summer have spanned the globe!
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Vatican Observatory Summer School
The 16th biennial Vatican Observatory Summer School (VOSS) was a fabulous success! The 24 students from 18 countries spent four week in Castel Gandolfo in intense studies on how to study variable stars in the era of large surveys… how to process tens of thousands of stars, and make scientific sense of the results.
Along with the astronomy, they also got to learn a little about the history of astronomy, with visits to Galileo’s home and the Galileo Museum in Florence, and the Vatican Observatory’s historic Papal Summer Gardens of Castel Gandolfo… including three nights observing with the newly restored 1891 Carte du Ciel Telescope!
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VOSS Students Visit Papal Gardens
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On June 8th VOSS students
had a trip through the Papal Gardens to visit our vintage telescopes.
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VOSS Students Have Audience with the Pope
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Pope:
"We should never fear to learn more about the universe!"
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Images Credit: L’Osservatore Romano
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Pope Francis addressed students participating in the 2018 Vatican Observatory Summer School program.
The Pope said:
“To know the universe, at least in part; to know what we know and what we don’t know, and how we can go about learning more; this is the task of the scientist.”
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VOSS Students Visit Pompeii
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The school is more than astronomy; on the weekends, we also give the students a chance to visit some of the historic and culture spots around Rome. On the first Saturday of the school the students got a guided tour of Pompeii
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Vatican Observatory Summer School Video
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Br. Bob Macke
created this video with i
nterviews from students in the 2018 Vatican Observatory Summer School. Br. Guy Consolmagno explains how the VOSS got started, and how wonderful it is to have so many
exceptional
students attend the summer school program.
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Br. Guy Filmed by NHK - Japan's National Broadcasting Organization
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During a recent interview with Brother Guy, the Japanese television network NHK filmed him in the Papal gardens near the Vatican Observatory’s new Visitor’s Center.
Photo courtesy of Monica Savatori (who works in Rome with Japanese media).
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Dr. Michelle Francl was the Keynote Speaker at the 36th Annual Cosmos and Creation Conference
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This conference at Loyola University in Maryland strives to bring scientists together to discuss and share their vision of God and the world, based on their scientific training, reading, and working experience. In Dr. Francl's two lectures, she discussed the topic:
“Are scientists mystics?”
On Friday June 8th, Dr. Francl delivered her first keynote and the topic:
“Practically Impractical: What Contemplatives Might Teach Scientists.”
On Saturday June 9th, she delivered her second keynote:
“Impractically Practical: What Scientists Might Teach Contemplatives”
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Image credit: Fairfield Mirror
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Holy See Represented at UNISPACE+50
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Image Credit:
Holy See Mission Vienna
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Give Space Peace a Chance
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Holy See encourages a unified, peaceful approach to space exploration.
Brother Guy Consolmagno led the Holy See's delegation at the 50th U.N. conference on the peaceful uses of space (UNISPACE+50).
“The Holy See wishes to stress the importance of ensuring that outer space remains peaceful and that all outer space activities and efforts protect and promote this goal.”
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Popular Posts on the Catholic Astronomer Blog
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Musings from the Sanctuary: Vacation
Journal
Part Two
Fr. James Kurzynski - June 25
About a year ago, I received a phone call from one of my former students, Kelsey Mattick, with a request I often receive as a priest: “Would you be available to officiate my wedding?”
These requests are both an honor and difficult to receive. They are an honor because they communicate that I have made a significant impact in someone’s life as a priest. They are also difficult because the schedule often leads me to decline these requests...
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Christopher M. Graney - June 9
This is just a fun little post to show off some pretty scenery. The video below was taken by yours truly, from atop the papal palace at Castel Gandolfo, site of one of the telescopes of the Vatican Observatory. Castel Gandolfo overlooks Lago Albano, a volcanic lake. A firefighting plane just happened to be practicing on the lake at the time, making an already spectacular scene just all the more interesting...
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Georges Lemaitre – Father of the “Big Bang”
Fr. James Kurzynski - March 28
One of the basic questions of science has a rather surprising answer:
Who was the first scientist to put forward the Big Bang Theory?
Most would presume that it was either Albert Einstein or Edwin Hubble. Instead, the correct answer is a Diocesan Priest from Belgium by the name of Monsignor Georges Lemaitre. The "popular" narrative of the day is that faith and science are irreconcilable foes that are locked in a constant battle with one another...
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The Way of St. James & The Galaxy
Christopher M. Graney - July 21
What do the Milky Way and an ancient pilgrimage road in Spain have in common? A name: the Camino de Santiago. Here is a brief discussion from Burnham’s Celestial Handbook:
In Old England
it was the Way of Saint James, the equivalent of the Spanish El Camino de Santiago; the name originating, it is said, from a popular legend that Theodomir, Bishop of Idria, was guided by a miraculous star to find the burial place of St. James in 835 AD...
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Welcome Our New Bloggers!
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Chris Olsen
Chris Olsen has a degree in history, and is a student of 19th-century photography and science. Chris does daguerreotypes and wet plate collodion, which are the two first photographic processes that were commercially successful. Chris works as an operator at Fermi National Accelerator Lab; this offers him the very special privilege of taking his camera equipment into the accelerator complex and using this 150-year-old process to take pictures of it.
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Image: Tintype of Br. Guy created by Chris Olsen
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Br. Bob Macke, SJ
Brother Robert Macke SJ is a member of the U.S. Central and Southern Province of the Society of Jesus. He studied physics at MIT and Washington University in St. Louis, and taught astronomy at Bowling Green State University before entering the Society of Jesus in 2001.
As a Jesuit, he studied philosophy at St. Louis University. He then taught physics, astronomy, and mathematics at Rockhurst University (Kansas City, Missouri) for one year, and then began a doctoral program studying meteorite physical properties at University of Central Florida. His dissertation, Survey of Meteorite Physical Properties: Density, Porosity and Magnetic Susceptibility, detailed measurements on more than 1200 individual meteorite specimens from major collections throughout the United States and Europe.
August 2014, Br. Macke became the curator of the Vatican collection of 1200 meteorite specimens.
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In the News: Vatican Observatory Staff Astronomer Dr. Richard D'Souza
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Andromeda Galaxy Canabalized Milky Way Sibling 2 Billion Year Ago
Dr. Richard D'Souza
at UM was lead author on a study that did computer simulations of the stars in the halo surrounding the Andromeda galaxy; he and his team were able to infer details about a long-dead sibling galaxy of Andromeda (M31) and the Milky Way that Andromeda shredded and consumed.
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In 2018-2019 we’re celebrating the 200th birthday of Father Angelo Secchi SJ, Jesuit astronomer at the Roman College who is often called the Father of Astrophysics. Before Secchi, astronomy was only the study of the positions of stars and planets; Secchi was the first person to think about those lights in the sky as places with their own compositions and histories.
Secchi produced profound advances in half a dozen widely divergent fields of science… meteorology, time keeping, surveying and geodesy, planetary geology, spectroscopy of the stars and the planets, stellar classification, solar physics, and the connection between solar activity and the Earth’s magnetosphere. For this work he received many honors, including the French Légion d’honneur. And not least of all, by so ably representing the Holy See as a nation independent of the newly unified Italy, he inspired the founding of the Vatican Observatory.
It’s my pleasure to invite you to take part in a “Secchi” pilgrimage in and around Rome. We’ll get to see a number of the places where he worked, including a visit to his rarely-seen laboratory above the St. Ignatius Church in Rome; the section of the ancient Appian Way where he laid out the Vatican’s “prime meridian”; and some of the colorful sundials he erected in the area. And of course we will visit the Specola headquarters in the Papal Summer Gardens of Castel Gandolfo, including a tour of these Gardens and the Papal Summer Palace. In these Gardens we have been restoring our historic telescopes into a new visitor’s center, which we hope to formally dedicate during our tour’s visit… and weather permitting, we’ll get to see the stars through the original 1891 Carte du Ciel refractor!
The fact that these areas are all located near some wonderful Italian restaurants in the glorious Roman countryside is, of course, just a delightful coincidence...
Please join me and Fr. Secchi in our quest to learn more about God's Universe
- Br. Guy
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Br. Guy Consolmagno Facebook Page
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You can now follow Br. Guy Consolmagno on a moderated Facebook page maintained by the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
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July 23:
Br. Guy gave his Barringer Lecture: The Philosophy of Meteoritics: Awe, Faith, and Data at
“Golden Brains”
-
Presidium of the Academy of Sciences,
Moscow, Russia
[L
ink]
Aug. 13:
Br. Guy at the 2nd International Conference Science & Religion at
Saskatchewan Center for Science and Religion
[L
ink]
Sept. 3:
Paul Mueller -
"
An Overview of Vatican Observatory Activities"
[Link]
Sept. 6-9:
Br. Guy is the Keynote Speaker at the
Great Lakes Star Gaze
. Bob Trembley will also be presenting at this event.
[Link]
Sept. 16:
Br. Guy is the DFMC Keynote Speaker.
Sept. 22:
Br. Guy - "Adventures of a Vatican Astronomer" at Christian Fellowship at CalTech.
Sept. 23:
Br. Guy - "Why does the Vatican have an Observatory?" at Holy Family Parish, S. Pasadena, CA.
Sept. 25:
Br. Guy - "Adventures of a Vatican Astronomer" at St. Meinrad Seminary.
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Take a look at the
resources we've gathered on this website - hundreds of articles, videos, and audio files about
Faith and Science.
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Browse our Blog - we have several authors writing about a wide range of faith and science related topics.
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Vatican Observatory Foundation
2017 East Lee Street
Tucson, Arizona 85719
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