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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.

Across the Universe: Souvenirs from Space

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This entry is part 31 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in October, 2004; it ran here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015 Typhoon 23 and I arrived in Japan on the same day. My mission (I can’t speak for the typhoon) was to attend an international workshop on sample returns from asteroids. Our hosts were the  scientists and engineers of  the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who are eagerly awaiting the arrival next summer of their spacecraft, Hayabusa, at asteroid Itokawa. (The remarkable challenges and eventually successes of Hayabusa can are described nicely at its Wikipedia site.) Astronomers usually have to be content with observing their objects from afar. But nothing beats actually going to a place to see what it’s really like. Itokawa is a potato-shaped lump of rock less than half a kilometer in diameter that apparently drifted into our neighborhood from the asteroid belt; though it looks like a typical asteroid, its orbit is not out beyond Mars but rather much … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Eccentric visitor

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This entry is part of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in October 2017 Studying the universe forces us to see ourselves in a new and often disorienting context. It’s not always easy. Talking with astronauts aboard the International Space Station on October 26 [2017], Pope Francis asked them, “traveling in space, thinking about things we take for granted here on Earth like the concept of “up” or “down”… tell us, is there something in particular that has surprised you, living in the Space Station?” The American astronaut Mark VandeHei replied, “in this environment, where we really don’t need the concept of up and down, to get my bearings I still have to decide which direction to perceive as up.” Every day in my meteorite lab I work with rocks that have passed through the sky (“meteorite” comes from the Greek word for sky), tangible evidence that the clouds are not an impenetrable barrier between us and rest of the solar system. We can … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Planetary Counsels

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This entry is part 28 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column was first published in The Tablet in September 2005, and republished here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015. Of course, as we all know, the discussions talked about here finally came to their climax in August 2006 with the definition of a “Dwarf Planet” as I described here. During the Council of Nicaea, so the story goes, tempers ran so high over the question of defining Jesus’ human and divine natures that fist fights broke out in the streets. Our councils this past month were much smaller, but no less heated. In Brazil, Norway, and Britain, various subsets of an International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group met in August and September [2005] to finally try to define a planet. Although our working group has been around for more than a year (I wrote about it here in April, 2004) the situation reached a crisis this summer with the announcement of the particulars for a body temporarily designated 2003 … Continue reading →

Time’s running out!

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… to apply for the Faith and Astronomy Workshop! Here’s some eye-candy to draw your attention… We’ve had an excellent response so far, and it will be a challenge to select 25 participants from the more-than-25 who have already applied. But there’s still plenty of time to make our decision even more challenging! It only takes a minute or two to apply, and frankly, when it comes to the selection process, the more the merrier! Just click on the box on this web site to be directed to the application form. Find out more about the workshop here: Apply Now for the 2019 Faith and Astronomy Workshop!   … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Stories of Another World

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This entry is part 27 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

I’ve recently returned from this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, held this year in San Jose, California. This version of the  column, published in the Tablet in September of 2004, was first published here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015. It describes my reaction following the 2004 Worldcon, held the first weekend of September in Boston.  Stories, myths, and tales make ideas a part of popular culture. Jesus taught with parables; fables and fairy tales are the way we teach children about life. Even the ancient Greek myths, it’s been argued, might have been deliberate devices for organizing and transmitting information about the natural world to nonscientific people. Once an idea gets turned into a story, people pay attention long enough to listen. And they’ll remember it. The images from Dante are far more vivid than the arguments of Aquinas. All fiction makes assumptions about science and religion. A good mystery, for instance, can depend on the physical possibility of certain … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Sins against the Earth

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This entry is part 172 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column was first published in The Tablet in September 2017 Last July [2017] I visited my sister, a retired schoolteacher who’d moved to Florida to be close to our aged parents. From there I continued on to the North American Science Fiction Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Two months later came the hurricane season. First, Hurricane Harvey dumped meters of water on Houston. My colleagues near the Johnson Space Center survived without much damage, but a nearby neighborhood where friends once lived was inundated; it may never be rebuilt. Then Hurricane Irma struck Florida. Again, my parents’ and sister’s houses suffered little damage, although my parents (along with more than half the state, millions of people) lost power for a week… not a trivial thing for retirees in a climate that demands air conditioning. Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, amazingly, dwarfed even those other mega-storms. During my July visit I’d met up with a student who’d observed with … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Faith in the search

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This entry is part 1 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in October 2016 The SETI Institute in California’s Silicon Valley is famously using an array of radio telescopes to look for signals from intelligent extraterrestrials. Meeting as part of their Science Advisory Board [in 2016], I heard founder Jill Tarter insist that their work was based on rational science, not “faith.” I disagreed. “You can’t prove yet that alien life exists,” I explained. “But you must have faith that it’s there, despite the lack of evidence; that’s why you keep looking.” Extraterrestrial life is an example of something we believe ought to exist, given how we think the universe works, even without prior evidence. We’ve recently had success looking for such things – the Higgs Boson, Gravitational Waves. Those searches required fabulously complex and expensive detectors and huge teams of scientists to find things we really weren’t sure were actually there. More often in astronomy, though, we believe in the things we cannot … Continue reading →

Apply Now for the 2019 Faith and Astronomy Workshop!

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    The annual Faith and Astronomy Workshop will be held next January 14 – 18, 2019, and applications are now open. What’s the FAW? Well… read on… What can modern astronomy tell us about creation – and its Creator? This four-day workshop, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory Foundation, is designed to bring those working in Catholic parishes an up-to-date overview of the universe: from the Big Bang, to the search for life in the universe, to our exploration of the planets… as seen through the eyes of the Jesuit priests and brothers who work at the Vatican’s own astronomical observatory. Our next workshop will be held the week of January 14-18, 2019, at the Redemptorist Renewal Center outside of Tucson, Arizona. Participants should plan to arrive on the afternoon of Monday, January 14; the work of the workshop begins that evening. Days and evenings are scheduled through Thursday. The workshop will end with Mass and breakfast on Friday morning, January 18. The workshop is … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Heavenly peace?

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This entry is part 25 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column ran in The Tablet in July, 2005; we first ran it here in August, 2015 The pictures from NASA’s Deep Impact mission (see a previous column) were spectacular. When the space probe hit Comet Temple 1, the heat of its impact made a brilliant flash; even observers on Earth could see it, and then watch the comet’s coma grow bigger and brighter as the dust and ice blasted off the comet spread out away from its nucleus. The Deep Impact astronomers (who, incidentally, insist they came up with that name before the Hollywood movie!) had planned for a network of observers, professional and amateur, to observe the comet before and after the impact. Here at the Vatican Observatory, we enlisted a dozen students from our [2005] summer school to help out. For two weeks, young astronomers from South America, Australia, and Europe gathered in the domes of our vintage 1935 Zeiss telescopes, perched atop the Pope’s summer home … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Total eclipse of the soul

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This entry is part 173 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in August 2017. Hard to believe it’s been a year since the solar eclipse… August 21, 2017, marked the first total solar eclipse visible in the continental US in a generation (since 1979). Everyone in America caught eclipse fever. “A total eclipse is a spectacular event,” or so I was told. I’d never seen one myself. The last time I tried to observe an eclipse, the air turned so cold that a rain cloud formed overhead during totality. But even then I recall that the Moon’s shadow spooked the local birds into thinking it was nightfall; and I remember my surroundings looking ominously strange. And so I accepted an invitation from Saints Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where the totality had its longest duration – two minutes, forty one seconds. A town of 30,000 souls, the residents there prepared for another 100,000 astro-tourists as if they were expecting a natural … Continue reading →

From the Tablet: Tales of Earthlings

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This entry is part 24 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

Along with my regular Tablet columns I am asked on occasion to write other articles for them. This one was run in August, 2005, just before the annual World Science Fiction Convention that was held that year in Glasgow. It ran again here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015. This year, the Worldcon will be held August 16-20 in San Jose. I’ll be there, too. When I was an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) I belonged to the Science Fiction Society, the “MITSFS”. We had a motto: “We’re not Fans, we just read the stuff.” There was an element of self-parody, of course; if we weren’t fans, why would we pay our dues to belong to a club of “misfits”? (Because the club had a room full of books – some 30,000 SF novels and related material – and comfy chairs, a welcome hideaway on campus.) But the motto also recognized an uncomfortable truth. Even at MIT, science fiction … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: All of the Above

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This entry is part 23 of 173 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in August, 2005. It first ran at The Catholic Astronomer in August, 2015 [During a weekend in August, 2005] while over a million young people were gathered in Germany to celebrate World Youth Day with the Pope, a hundred and thirty kids from Detroit were taking part in a parallel camp-out organized by the Archdiocese on the grounds of a small farm in the Thumb of Michigan. (The lower peninsula of my home state, Michigan, is shaped like a mitten, and I grew up on the peninsula jutting into Lake Huron that makes up the mitten’s thumb. Readers of a certain age may remember a British pop band who found a town at the Thumb’s base by sticking a pin into a map and thereby called themselves the Bay City Rollers.) “Turn left onto a dirt road, and look for a pond and a red barn,” read my directions. Every barn in Michigan is … Continue reading →