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Br. Guy Consolmagno

About Br. Guy Consolmagno

Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ is Director of the the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he earned undergraduate and masters' degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona; he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989.

At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, his research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies, observing Kuiper Belt comets with the Vatican's 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona, and applying his measure of meteorite physical properties to understanding asteroid origins and structure. Along with more than 200 scientific publications, he is the author of a number of popular books including Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis), and most recently Would You Baptize an Extraterrestial? (with Father Paul Mueller, SJ). He also has hosted science programs for BBC Radio 4, been interviewed in numerous documentary films, appeared on The Colbert Report, and for more than ten years he has written a monthly science column for the British Catholic magazine, The Tablet.

Dr. Consolmagno's work has taken him to every continent on Earth; for example, in 1996 he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with a NASA team on the blue ice regions of East Antarctica. He has served on the governing boards of the Meteoritical Society; the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (of which he was chair in 2006-2007); and IAU Commission 16 (Planets and Satellites). In 2000, the small bodies nomenclature committee of the IAU named an asteroid, 4597 Consolmagno, in recognition of his work. In 2014 he received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences for excellence in public communication in planetary sciences.

Orbit of Asteroid 4597 Consolmagno

Diary of the Specola: Astronomy under lock-down, Part 2

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This entry is part 53 of 53 in the series Diary

Since my last posting about what we’re up to, several other members of the Vatican Observatory have chimed in with their short reports on what they’ve been up to in this time of pandemic… In the spring semester, Fr. Paul Mueller SJ normally teaches a philosophy of science course at the Pontifical Gregorian University; his offering this year is “Philosophical Questions in Biology”. And of course now he has shifted to on-line teaching,  Meanwhile, as the superior of the community and vice-director of the Observatory, he has charge of the day to day running of the operation in Castel Gandolfo. He writes, “I’ve been working day-to-day with the Observatory’s lay staff members to determine whether they will come to work and what they can be doing, within the limits we must observe. All of us Jesuits have had extra time for reading and prayer. And last evening we had a cookout!” Fr. Gabriele Gionti SJ is also in Castel Gandolfo. … Continue reading →

Diary of the Specola: Astronomy under lock-down

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This entry is part 52 of 53 in the series Diary

Half of the astronomers from the Vatican Observatory work out of Castel Gandolfo, Italy, and the other half in Tucson. Italy has been under a strict lock-down for several weeks, while the University of Arizona is also closed and members of staff are strongly urged to stay home. In particular, all the telescopes at the Mount Graham International Observatory, including the Vatican’s Advanced Technology Telescope (the VATT), have been shut down in order to allow the day staff to stay down the mountain, closer to home and family (and, should it be necessary, medical care.) But our “commute” in Castel Gandolfo is just walking downstairs from the community living quarters to the Specola offices. And our home in Tucson is well served by the internet. (In fact, my own office as president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation is just a room in our house here in Tucson.) Still, I was curious to find out what people have been up to. … Continue reading →

ⓜ Turn right at Orion?

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This entry is part 4 of 13 in the series And Then I Wrote

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places…  This was one of my favorite book reviews… I got to be snarky and still give the book an enthusiastic thumb’s up! The review ran in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences in 2001. Turn Right at Orion: Travels Through the Cosmos by Mitchell Begelman. Perseus Publishing/Helix Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 2000, 264 pp. I have to admit, I had every reason to hate this book before I even cracked open a page. As the co-author myself of a bestselling astronomy book called Turn LEFT at Orion (published more than ten years ago by Cambridge University Press, with a new edition just out), I obviously have my own opinion about how to find one’s way around the galaxy! And the plot device of this book, … Continue reading →

Remembering Bill Stoeger: New Videos

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Today (March 24) marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Fr. Bill Stoeger. Many of us remember him for both his brilliant academic mind and his holy and gentle personality. Over the years there have been a number of posts here about him and his work… he was both a cosmologist (classmate and friend of Stephen Hawking, collaborator and co-author with a number of the great cosmologists of our era) and as a theologian. He also was greatly sought after as a spiritual director. He was also widely sought after as a speaker and subject of videos. His style was very different from most media-savvy astronomers; rather than having a glib answer ready to hand, he would speak slowly, gently, but clearly, weighing each word… and making the interviewer feel that this was perhaps the first time that question had been asked (even when in reality it was the millionth time!) Recently, at the Specola we got a lovely … Continue reading →

ⓜ An Elder View of the Solar System

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This entry is part 5 of 13 in the series And Then I Wrote

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places…  A well-known secret of book reviews is that reviews of bad books are lots more fun to write, and read. On the other hand, having been an author myself, I feel bad about scoring points off someone who’s not around to defend themselves. Every book represents a year of some poor author’s life, and it is just as much hard work to write a bad book as a good one. Well, this one was a doozie. It was also the first book I was ever sent to review, dating from back when I still worked as a professor at Lafayette College, before I joined the Jesuits. My anger was more directed at the major publisher who allowed it to be printed; the author was certainly … Continue reading →

ⓜ The Observer’s Guide to Astronomy

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This entry is part 6 of 13 in the series And Then I Wrote

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places…  Keeping up my pattern this month of book reviews, I include here a review of a The Observer’s Guide to Astronomy, Volume I. edited by Patrick Martinez in the late 1980s; translated by Storm Dunlop into English in 1994. My review ran in Icarus volume 117, pp. 216–217, in 1995. So why bother reading about a book that is now more than thirty years old? As I argue at the end of the review, “This book, written for the amateur today, may find its greatest long-term professional importance in the future as a lucid and detailed record of how astronomy used to be done, way back in the 20th century.” It also shows my typical style of book reviewing. All book reviews are personal opinions; and so I am not … Continue reading →

A Memorial for George

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We have set up a memorial page for Fr. George Coyne: click here, or type in www.VOFoundation.org/fr-george-coyne/ We have three goals for this memorial page. First, we want to provide a place where people can post their memories of Fr. George. Second, we want to help organize a memorial book which would include a selection of his writings and the memories posted at that site. And third, we want to raise enough money to let us publish that book and continue the work that George so loved: the science of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope the education of young astronomers, especially from the developing world the engagement with the public with our astronomy our vision of faith and science working together   Please take a look at that page, and contribute what you can, as you can. We’re hoping to raise a significant amount of money, and we already have one major gift to start things off, but we’ll also … Continue reading →

The Science of the VATT

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The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) has been in regular operation for twenty five years now, and it is a mainstay of our scientific efforts. There are two questions I get about it all the time. What good is a relatively small (1.8 meter aperture) telescope in the days of giant telescopes and space telescopes? And, related to that question… what actually has the VATT accomplished? The answer to the first is simple. Discoveries are made with small telescopes, and then confirmed or studied in depth with big telescopes. If you think about it, that shouldn’t be surprising. Rarely can you afford to “take a chance” with a big telescope on observing something that may or may not turn out to be interesting, because there is so much competition for observing time on those telescopes. Astronomers have to write up detailed proposals well in advance of when they want to use those telescopes. A committee will go over all of … Continue reading →

Facing the next apocalypse: Diary of March 7, 2020

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Let’s see… how many ways will the world end, this week? We’ve got the Corvid-19 virus; it has killed too many people already, scared a lot more, and disrupted everybody’s life right now, whether they are scared or just being reasonably cautious. (Thanks to that virus, we have had to postpone our biennial Vatican Observatory Summer School for a year, to 2021, simply because arranging for international travel for students from around the world to a country, Italy, that has been one of the first hit has become awkward, to say the least.) I am planning to travel later this month; I hope it will still be possible. We’ve got politics as worse than usual in many countries of the world; the only thing that unites us all, it seems, is horror at those other leaders who disagree with me. We’ve got conflict within the Church, the folks supporting our work, with all sorts of nasty innuendos passed back and … Continue reading →

ⓜ A History of Asteroids

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This entry is part 7 of 13 in the series And Then I Wrote

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places…  One of the pleasures of the time I get to spend in Tucson is meeting up once a week for lunch with a bunch of fellow asteroid scientists… these gatherings of “Asteroid Lunch” go back to my graduate student days; they were already happening when I arrived in 1975, so they are now more than 45 years old! This winter, a historian of planetary sciences, Cliff Cunningham, started showing up. And as soon as I saw him, I wanted to hide… because I recalled writing for Sky and Telescope a really negative review of a history of asteroids book many years earlier, and I was afraid it was his book; and if he ever found out… Well, after a couple of weeks like this, I … Continue reading →

ⓜ Seeing versus understanding

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This entry is part 8 of 13 in the series And Then I Wrote

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places…  The year 2009 marked the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope, and there were a number of articles and publications in its honor. This one I wrote for a special publication in the US in honor of the International Year of Astronomy… and as an extra treat, it includes yet another funny story about the big gas spectra tube at the U of Arizona Lunar Lab that I wrote about last month in our “Stupid Astronomer” series… In my astronomical work, I use a microscope as much as a telescope. Though I do spend time every year observing at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in southern Arizona, the majority of my time is spent in a laboratory in the gardens of the Pope’s summer home outside … Continue reading →

Reflections on the passing of Fr. George Coyne

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This entry is part 51 of 53 in the series Diary

I am back now from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY, where the funeral of Fr. George Coyne was held on Monday. First, I thought I would share here a couple of items that showed the respect Fr. Coyne had both in the world at large and at Le Moyne College. To begin, here’s a copy of the obituary as run in the Sunday New York Times on February 16: While I was at Le Moyne, I was given a tour of the science building and found that George was mentioned both on their “wall of Jesuit sciences” and on a large poster in a passageway between buildings on campus: Finally, two more items I want to publish here are a cleaned-up version of the comments that I was invited to give at the funeral, and the remarks that the president of Le Moyne, Dr. Linda LeMura Reflections on the life of a Jesuit Astronomer, Br Guy Consolmagno, Vatican Observatory … Continue reading →