Author Archives: Christopher M. Graney

About Christopher M. Graney

Christopher M. Graney is an Adjunct Scholar at the Vatican Observatory. For some years now his research focus has been the history of astronomy, especially the late 16th and early 17th centuries. That research has resulted in two books: Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science Against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (2015), and Mathematical Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo (2017), both published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Graney is also editor of the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages.

Misinformative Books from Surprising Places

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Misinformation.  It is a big topic these days, and a big problem.  And when the topic is astronomy and the Copernican Revolution, misinformation abounds, even in the relatively durable, more controlled medium of books.  “Caveat lector!” applies to this topic—“Let the reader beware!” Two recently-published books are especially disappointing in this regard.  One book especially disappoints because it misinforms despite being a product of the most reputable sort of scholarly publishing.  The other book especially disappoints because it misinforms despite being a product of Catholic organizations and Catholic authors who sought to create a book for younger readers that in part corrects misinformation. The scholarly book is The Shogun’s Silver Telescope: God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625, published in 2020 by Oxford University Press (OUP).  The author is Timon Screech, Professor of the History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.  SOAS’s web site says that SOAS is … Continue reading →

Faith and Science (Fiction), but Different

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The Vatican Observatory Faith and Science web resource contains hundreds of entries on the broad topic of faith and science.  I am Editor of this resource, and my more recent efforts in this regard have tended toward trying to find a wide variety of different material to add to the resource.  And one new entry that really is “something completely different” is on the book Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World by Jörg Matthias Determann. The chances are good that readers of Sacred Space Astronomy know something about science fiction.  After all, with Marvel and Star Wars so popular now, the person who knows nothing about science fiction is pretty rare these days.  But chances are also good that even those readers who know a good deal about science fiction will not be familiar with the material discussed in Determann’s book (which, as its title says, straddles both science fiction and science—and … Continue reading →

The Sun Rules!

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If they [the stars] are suns having the same nature as our sun, why do not these suns collectively outdistance our sun in brilliance? Why do they all together transmit so dim a light…? When sunlight bursts into a sealed room through a hole made with a tiny pin point, it outshines the fixed stars at once. The difference is practically infinite. So said Johannes Kepler, responding in 1610 to Galileo’s just-published Starry Messenger.  Kepler was arguing against Giordano Bruno’s idea that stars were other suns, orbited by other Earths.  Kepler felt that Galileo’s telescopic observations of stars strengthened the case against Bruno. Kepler’s comments regarding the relative brightnesses of sun and stars are really perceptive.  He knew what he was talking about.  His comments illustrate something about the sun and stars that we probably do not appreciate. Modern astronomers measure the brightness of stars using the “magnitude” system.  The modern system is tied to an ancient rating scale for … Continue reading →

Want Diversity in Astronomy?  Try a Culture Change

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If you subscribe to Sky & Telescope magazine you will have noticed that half its issues over the past six months featured discussions of diversity in astronomy.  The October 2020 issue had a “Spectrum” editorial by The Staff titled “Amateur Astronomy for All”.  The December issue featured a “Focal Point” column by Dara Norman called “Time to Get Serious”.  The letters section of the February 2021 issue was dedicated to reader responses to the October editorial and to the general lack of diversity in astronomy. Apparently, no progress has been made in regard to diversity in astronomy, ever.  Norman points out that— while the total number of physics and astronomy professors increased from 2008 to 2016… the number of Black and Hispanic professors remained at the same tiny percentage of the academic work force —namely 0.6%, combined.*  In other words, there are effectively zero Black and Hispanic professors.  That is truly remarkable.  Note again that the number of professors has … Continue reading →

How a Jesuit Astronomer and His Student beat Isaac Newton to a Key Idea by more than 50 Years (re-run)

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This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran on May 25, 2019. I am rerunning it because the Journal for the History of Astronomy, which in February 2019 published the research that this post is based on, has made the published research available, free of charge.  So CLICK HERE and then download a PDF of the original paper.  You will see that it is pretty similar to this post. In 1614, well before Isaac Newton was even born, a German Jesuit astronomer named Christoph Scheiner and his student, Johann Georg Locher, developed an explanation for how the Earth could orbit the sun.  Earth, they said, was like a massive ball, perpetually falling toward the sun.  They discussed this in their 1614 book Disquisitiones Mathematicae de Controversiis et Novitatibus Astronomicis, or Mathematical Disquisitions Concerning Astronomical Controversies and Novelties (recently translated by yours truly, and published by the University of Notre Dame Press—click here).  This was Locher’s thesis for his degree … Continue reading →

Faith, Science and Astronomy Textbooks

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Take a look at a new resource on the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science website!—brief reviews of astronomy textbooks from a “Faith and Science” perspective.  You will find all this under “Educational Resources”. The idea for these reviews arose from questions that Vatican Observatory/V.O. Foundation folks have received over time, and from one question in particular.*   A while back, someone used the contact link here on the blog to ask about astronomy textbooks.  The questioner asked if we could recommend an introductory astronomy textbook that would be suitable for Catholic homeschooling. This question produced a bit of discussion at the V.O.F.  What was the questioner looking for?  What would make an astronomy text more or less “Catholic-suitable”?  There are science textbooks, published for certain religious schools, that do not discuss, say, the Big Bang theory.  But the V.O. is a scientific establishment—we are not going to recommend a book that dismisses a major scientific idea that has good reasoning and … Continue reading →

“Cosmos: Possible Worlds”, 10-13: Goodbye to a Losing Season

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When your favorite team is not so good, sometimes the end of the season can come as a relief.  That’s doubly true when the last couple games of the season go especially badly.  This Cosmos fan finds himself happy to see this season come to an end.  There is always next season, maybe, and hope for better days to come. “A Tale of Two Atoms”, the 10th episode of Cosmos: Possible Worlds, was a win.  I liked the overall discussion of scientists involved in nuclear physics, especially Neil deGrasse Tyson’s clear-eyed view of those scientists.  He notes, for example, that even after World War II ended, scientists kept right on working on atomic weapons.  Apparently, many scientists were willing to continue work on weapons of mass destruction even after the crisis of war and its perceived threat of German nuclear technology had passed. But the highlight of the whole Cosmos: Possible Worlds series for me was the animated feature in … Continue reading →

The World’s Worst Astrophotographer sees and shares the 2020 ‘Christmas Star’

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Tomorrow is the Baptism of the Lord, the end of the Christmas season which began on December 24.  So today is still Christmas, and that means a post about the 2020 “Christmas Star” is still appropriate! In my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky the weather was persistently cloudy across mid-December.  I did not have my hopes up for seeing the Great Conjunction.  So when the weather folks started mentioning that the sky might clear a bit the night of December 20, I decided that, if clear weather did come, I would make a big fuss over getting out a telescope. December 20 dawned as grey and dreary as the previous who-knows-how-many days had been, and by 2:00 PM it was still grey and dreary.  But then, around 3:00, the sun started to break through, and before long the weather was absolutely gorgeous.  So I started text-blasting my neighbors, telling them that I would have a telescope set up on the corner … Continue reading →

Carols versus Matthew on the Star of Wonder

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Tomorrow is Epiphany, and chances are high that you will hear at mass this refrain from “We Three Kings”: O star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright, Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect light. And if you are not at mass tomorrow, I bet you know that song anyway.  It was written by John H. Hopkins, Jr. in 1857.* Another song that might be sung at Epiphany mass is “What Star is This”: What star is this, with beams so bright, More lovely than the noonday light? ʹTis sent to announce a newborn King, Glad tidings of our God to bring. ʹTis now fulfilled what God decreed, “From Jacob shall a star proceed;” And lo! the eastern sages stand To read in heav’n the Lord’s command. That is by Charles Coffin (1676-1749), translated into English by John Chandler (1806-1876). Every year around Christmas my most patient wife has to listen to me carry … Continue reading →

The Sun Illuminates Fort Ancient

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Drive northeast of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a few miles due east of the town of Lebanon, and you will find Fort Ancient.  The “fort” was constructed by Native American “Hopewell” people long prior to the arrival of peoples not indigenous to the Americas.*  The place is really cool.  It is an impressive piece of work, consisting of three and a half miles of earthen walls that measure up to 68 feet wide and up to 23 feet high, enclosing a flat area of 100 acres, all sitting atop a 235-foot high plateau overlooking the Little Miami River.  Within the walls of Fort Ancient are a museum/visitor center and a very nice picnic area constructed during the Great Depression by one of the African American units of the Civilian Conservation Corps. But Fort Ancient was probably never a fort.  The walls are broken by 67 openings.  Inside the area are various stone circles, sections of flagstone pavement, and conical and crescent-shaped … Continue reading →

Bah! Humbug. Science.

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This post comes from a “Science in the Bluegrass” column I wrote for The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky. John Adams, the second president of the United States, surely was no fan of Advent. Writing to Thomas Jefferson in January of 1825, he complained of people who “believe that great Principle which has produced this boundless universe… came down to this little ball [Earth].” He added that, “until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.” Some people today feel the same way, but rejecting not just the Incarnation, but God as well. These modern Scrooges have been sold the idea that science says we humans are nothing more than a finite number of atoms in motion, with no soul, and that the world is merely an uncreated result of random happenstance. They reject belief in anything that can’t be measured and verified through experiment. And so, … Continue reading →

“Cosmos: Possible Worlds”, 7-9: The Good, the Bad, and the Quantum

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It’s time for more commentary on the Cosmos: Possible Worlds show now that a few more episodes have aired: “The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth” (Episode #7), “The Sacrifice of Cassini” (Episode #8), and “Magic Without Lies” (Episode #9). Episode #9 was on the wave/particle nature of light and on quantum mechanics.  It included an animation of Newton sticking a bodkin (something much like a knitting needle) into his eye socket as part of his investigations into light.  That was cringe-inducing, of course.  I love pointing* out that stunt of his to students—especially showing them Newton’s notes where he describes doing this.  And his notes show that he pushed that needle deep into his eye socket, too.  Had Newton been alive today, would he have made the discoveries that he made?  After all, had Newton been alive today, he surely would have been on a strict regimen of therapy and medicine.  He might then have been less prone to … Continue reading →