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Christopher M. Graney

About Christopher M. Graney

Christopher M. Graney is professor of physics and astronomy at Jefferson Community & Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky (USA), where he helps keep the college’s observatory running. For some years now his research focus has been the history of astronomy, especially the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He is the author of 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.

Science and Stone

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Would you consider a group of nineteenth-century Belgian immigrant stonemasons, building Catholic churches and other structures in a sparsely populated area of Indiana, to be scientists?  (This post is part of a collection of posts on the subject of who can do science—click here for the whole series.)  I say you might.  This post-of-many-pictures is about them and the remarkable legacy that they created.  Those stonemasons created that legacy because they did science—they had the inclination to study and test nature to see how things work, and to determine what was true, and from that they produced things that were an enduring and valuable benefit for their community.  People who do this (even if they are not in the kinds of situations where they are likely to be part of the formal scientific community, or to work in a laboratory or an observatory, or to write papers and attend scientific meetings) will have an impact on their community.  Their science results … Continue reading →

The Best Telescope in the World Under My Command

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I am happy to introduce to readers of The Catholic Astronomer to yet another guest blogger.  Fernando Comerón is an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory.  A while back he sent me an e-mail in response to my post about Lunar Eavesdropping.  In his e-mail he described use of an 8.2 m telescope!  “Back in 2009, just a few days after the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, I was granted observing time at Unit 4 of ESO’s 8.2m Very Large Telescope in Chile to obtain a series of infrared images of Tranquility Base at the time of sunset using NACO, an adaptive optics-assisted camera, using a nearby illuminated peak as the wavefront sensing reference to obtain a high Strehl ratio. As a result of the observations I got a large number of extremely detailed images of the area—probably the sharpest images of the area ever obtained from the ground.”  When he contributed to The Catholic Astronomer some remarks … Continue reading →

Tombs of the Unknown Scientists

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On Cemetery Hill in Springfield, Kentucky, in the “Holy Land” of Kentucky, stands a monument “dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854, and to Louis Sansbury, a black man who cared for and buried the victims in these approximately 106 unmarked graves”. The “Holy Land” in central Kentucky is home to much U.S. Catholic history. Here is where Catholicism first took root away from the coasts as the United States expanded westward. The first diocese in the U.S. was established in Baltimore, Maryland in 1789, but in 1808 four new dioceses were established in the U.S.: the diocese of Boston, the diocese of New York, the diocese of Philadelphia, and the diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky (which later became the Archdiocese of Louisville). Thus Bardstown is home to St. Joseph’s proto-cathedral. The “Holy Land” is also home to numerous churches, many dating back into the late eighteenth century, including the oldest Dominican church … Continue reading →

July 1922 – The Pope Views the Planets

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The planets are going away. As we head into winter, that glorious chain of planets that has been strung across the evening sky for months is disappearing into the sunset. Back in August you could just walk outside and see Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars (and often the moon) lined up from west to east across the zodiac constellations. Now we are down to just Mars and Saturn, and soon enough it will just be Mars, and then none. Back in 1922 the planets were lined up in the summer sky much like they were this summer, and Pope Pius XI, who liked astronomy and was very involved with the Vatican Observatory, got a look at them through one of the V.O. telescopes. The V.O. telescopes were at that time on the grounds of the Vatican itself, mounted along one of the walls, right by St. Peter’s, as can been seen in this cool photo from that era. According to … Continue reading →

Kentucky Science Conversations – Professor Kate Bulinski writes a guest blog

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This is the second “Kentucky Science Converstions” guest blog.  As mentioned in last week’s post, Prof. Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky, and Louisville’s Archbishop Joseph Kurtz set in motion a series of ongoing conversations about science.  This conversation has included Williger, Kurtz, Tim Dowling, who studies planetary atmospheric dynamics at UofL, and Kate Bulinski, a geoscientist with the School of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University in Louisville, and me. I of course had to encourage all of these folks to contribute posts to this blog. Today we have a guest post from Professor Kate Bulinski, who is is an Associate Professor of Geosciences in the School of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University. She received her B.S. in Geoscience from The Pennsylvania State University in 2002 and her Ph.D. in Geology from University of Cincinnati in 2008. In addition to teaching classes for undergraduate students each semester, she pursues paleontological research often involving her students. … Continue reading →

Kentucky Science Conversations – Archbishop Joseph Kurtz writes a guest blog

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I am happy to introduce to readers of The Catholic Astronomer a few guest bloggers.  In September 2017, with astronomy “in the air” thanks to the August 2017 eclipse, my friend and colleague, Prof. Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky, sent an invitation to Louisville’s Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to attend some of the talks that are part of the Public Astronomy Lecture Series hosted by UofL’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.  Archbishop Kurtz got right back to Gerry, commenting on his own interest in astronomy, and suggesting that they get together to discuss their common interest.  Gerry in turn suggested inviting me and Tim Dowling, who studies planetary atmospheric dynamics at UofL (and who has written a guest post for The Catholic Astronomer on the 2017 eclipse).  Within a week or two the four of us were having our first meeting.  Astronomy was the spark for this endeavor, but of course there is more … Continue reading →

St. Macrina’s Discourse on Science and Technology

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St. Macrina the Younger has a fascinating fourth-century discourse on science and technology. Macrina, who lived from 330 to 379 A.D., was the sister of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the daughter of St. Emmelia, and the granddaughter of St. Macrina the Elder (saints run thick in that family). Her discourse on science and technology was recorded by St. Gregory: it was part of their dialogue that became Gregory’s On the Soul and the Resurrection. Macrina discusses how we know more than just what our eyes show us, because through our minds we take what our eyes see and we reason and we calculate; and we come to know, for example, that the sun is far larger than the Earth (science), and how to create machinery that can even imitate human actions (technology). Check out what St. Macrina the Younger has to say—her discourse is available on the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages: CLICK … Continue reading →

Mathematics Against the Multiverse in 1614 (re-run)

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This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran on May 11, 2016. The most surprising things can be found in astronomy’s history—like “the multiverse,” that collection of parallel universes that is the central theme in Brian Greene’s 2011 book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. You might not expect to encounter a multiverse in an astronomy book from four hundred years ago, but in fact you will if you look through a 1614 book entitled Disquisitiones Mathematicae de Controversiis et Novitatibus Astronomicis (or Mathematical Disquisitions Concerning Astronomical Controversies and Novelties) written by Johann Georg Locher of Germany. The greatest claim to fame of Disquisitions is probably that Galileo made much sport of it in his 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican. Locher was a student of Christoph Scheiner. Scheiner was an astronomer at the University of Ingolstadt, a Jesuit priest, and someone Galileo would eventually come into … Continue reading →

Knowing the Moon’s Distance (re-run)

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This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran on March 24, 2016. How do we know what we know in science? What is the distance from the Earth to the moon? You can easily find that information using a smart phone and Google. Google says that distance is 238,900 miles. Fine, but how do you know that value is right? Google’s business is not astronomical research. No doubt Google got the value from some “Scientific Authority.” Do you believe Google? Do you believe Scientific Authority? How do you know the moon isn’t just on some dome up there, way above the clouds? Seriously—how do you know? You may simply believe Authority, but plenty of people do not. Just recently [in early 2016] Neil deGrasse Tyson felt the need to respond to rapper B.o.B’s assertion that the world is flat, an idea no more absurd than the moon being on a dome above the clouds. So how might people … Continue reading →

The Mound, the Fort, and the Church: The Trees Speak to Science (Part II)

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How old is Serpent Mound, a Native American monument notable in part for its astronomical alignments? Last week we saw how E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis argued that the Native American works that they surveyed in the 1840’s had to be many centuries old, by reason of the trees growing on those works. However, you may recall from my post of three weeks ago that the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society), who operates the Serpent Mounds site, states that— Thousands of years ago, Native Ohioans populated the landscape with mounds and massive earthworks. In the late 19th century, Harvard University archaeologist Frederic Ward Putnam excavated Serpent Mound, but he found no artifacts in the Serpent that might allow archaeologists to assign it to a particular culture. Based largely on the nearby presence of Adena burial mounds, later archaeologists attributed the effigy to the Adena culture that flourished from 800 B.C. to A.D. 100. This theory … Continue reading →

The Mound, the Fort, and the Church: The Trees Speak to Science (Part I)

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My post from two weeks ago discussed Serpent Mound, a large Native American monument, and the possible astronomical alignments in the mound, and really how uncertain is the question of those astronomical alignments. As the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society) says— Due to the short sight lines and the inability to define precise alignments… it may not be possible to determine whether the builders of the Serpent really intended it to be aligned to either the sun or the moon. Then last week’s post featured “astronomical alignments” in St. Louis Bertrand Church in my home town of Louisville, Kentucky, and how reliable the calculations and repeatable the results are regarding the position of the sun shining into that church (or into anything else). Not much is uncertain in that case. One nice thing about astronomy is just how reliable and repeatable it can be in so many cases—science at its cleanest and brightest: here are my calculations; … Continue reading →

The Light of Truth

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My post for last week discussed Serpent Mound in Ohio, and possible astronomical alignments present in that Native American monument. Today is the Autumnal Equinox—one of the days that supposedly is marked by the bends in Serpent Mound—so I am sticking with the theme of astronomical alignments. It turns out that astronomical alignments can be found in all sorts of places, if you think to look for them. A friend of mine, Justin Elliott, is the sort of person who thinks to look for them. He and his family regularly attend either the 9:00 AM or 10:30 AM Mass at St. Louis Bertrand Church in my hometown of Louisville. Perhaps because Justin grew up attending a “megachurch” that is relatively plain compared to St. Louis Bertrand, or perhaps because he has read too many mystery books to his own children, or perhaps because he watched too many movies of the “Indiana Jones” or “DaVinci Code” genres, Justin has a fascination … Continue reading →