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.

Where to Turn? Religion, science, and the direction of Mecca

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There is a great new entry in the Vatican Observatory Faith & Science pages (or so say I, but since I am the editor of that resource, I am rather biased). The entry is called “The Qibla Debate”. “Faith and science” discussions tend to focus on a certain selection of very familiar materials, such as Darwin and evolution and human origins, or the Galileo story, or maybe Giordano Bruno. “The Qibla Debate” features a faith and science discussion that revolves around material with which most people in non-Muslim cultures will be unfamiliar: the direction of Mecca. What is the direction of Mecca from where you are right now? Muslims are enjoined to face Mecca during daily prayers. Mosques should be oriented toward Mecca also. So what direction is that, and how do you know? Early mosques were built before the Islamic world had developed much science. Their directions were not determined scientifically. And, as science developed in the Muslim world, … Continue reading →

More Serious Sirius Business

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My post last week was about brilliant Sirius, which turns out to be a double star, comprised of a much brighter Sirius A, and a faint Sirius B.  We saw how the motions of these stars, seen in the video below, told us that the Sirius system was 8.6 light years away, and had 20+ times the sun’s luminosity.  The motion of Sirius B orbiting around Sirius A takes 50 years to complete.  The video below shows a little more than two complete orbits of Sirius B about Sirius A, from approximately 2020 to approximately 2154.  The video is a simulation, and presents what you would see if you had a very good telescope aimed at the exact same point in the sky for all that time. If the telescope is instead aimed at Sirius A, then the motion of Sirius B becomes a textbook case of an orbit—Kepler’s laws of orbital motion in action, as can be seen in … Continue reading →

A Serious Sirius Business

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The brightest star* in the sky, Sirius, the Dog Star, was the subject of a nice, short article in the March 2020 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.  The article noted that Sirius is a double star: the Sirius that we point to in the night sky (what astronomers call “Sirius A”) is orbited by a faint companion star (“Sirius B”).  Sirius B is most difficult to see through a telescope, owing to the brightness of Sirius A—but it can be spotted, and even photographed. The motion of Sirius B around Sirius A can also be spotted.  Observe Sirius with a good telescope over a period of 50 years and you will see Sirius B complete one orbit.  The video below shows a little more than two complete orbits of Sirius B about Sirius A, from approximately 2020 to approximately 2154.  This video is a simulation made with the app Celestia.  It shows what you would see if you had … Continue reading →

The Summer Stars Speak

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This post is based on a series of four posts that originally appeared here in July of 2016. My posts for the next two weeks will be on the science of learning about the stars through “double stars”, so this is good material to “re-run”. Look up at the summer night sky. You see stars, of course. There are bright stars like Vega and Arcturus, middling stars like Polaris (the North Star) and Mizar (the star in the “bend” of the Big Dipper’s handle), and faint stars like Rho Leo (an unremarkable star in the constellation of Leo, the lion) and Alcor (the dim companion of Mizar). When we look at these stars, what are we seeing? How do we know what the stars are? You have probably heard that the sun is a star, but are all these stars suns? I have previously discussed in this blog how a person with excellent vision will see stars as small, round … Continue reading →

Vatican Observatory Photometry and “The Vilnius Connection”

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“Forty Years of Photometry.” That is what is on the cover of the Specola Vaticana/Vatican Observatory’s 2019 Annual Report. If you have not had a look at the report, click here and read through it (and to see Annual Reports going back years, click here). The two gentlemen on the cover are Fr. Richard P. Boyle, S.J. (at right) and Fr. Robert Janusz, S.J. And that cover, and those gentlemen, have a connection to my “origins story” with this Sacred Space Astronomy blog and the V.O. The Annual Report’s main article starts off by noting that, Just as this year the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, so here at the Specola we mark a significant anniversary: 40 years since the pioneering publication of Father Martin McCarthy and his collaborators on stellar photometry, which laid the groundwork for what has become a major thrust of research at the Vatican Observatory. In that paper, Fr. McCarthy described … Continue reading →

Back Yard Meteor Crater: Jeptha Knob

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There is a meteor crater in my back yard! Despite having lived in the Louisville, Kentucky area for thirty years, I only learned about the crater this year, when I took part in the AAS Kentucky Area Meeting 2020 on March 7. One presenter mentioned impact sites in Kentucky, including Jeptha Knob. Jeptha Knob is located half an hour due east of my house. It is just a few miles from Shelbyville, Kentucky, home of one of my college’s campuses. A few years ago, I taught Astronomy 101 at that campus for two semesters, wholly unaware of any nearby crater. However, while I did not know of Jeptha Knob until this year, I did know the name because of the Jeptha Creed distillery in Shelbyville (we make a lot of bourbon here in Kentucky, you know). Last month my wife and I decided to go check out Jeptha Knob—a good “no social contact”, enjoyable, yet professionally constructive thing to do … Continue reading →

Galileo and the Science Deniers – a Review

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Christina of Lorraine had astronomy questions for Fr. Benedetto Castelli, so she sat him down to get answers. The conversation occurred in December of 1613, and arguably Christina’s questions set the entire “Galileo Affair” into motion. Mario Livio opens his new book, Galileo and the Science Deniers, with that conversation between the mother of the ruler of Tuscany and one of Galileo’s friends. Livio says he wrote a book about Galileo because— very few of the known biographies [of Galileo] were written by a research astronomer or astrophysicist. I believe, or at least hope, that someone actively engaged in astrophysical research can bring a novel perspective and fresh insights even to this seemingly overworked arena. He also says he wrote it because he sees a connection between the Galileo story and the unscientific and anti-scientific attitudes present today in the broader world beyond working scientists (p. xv). Those are great reasons to write a book about Galileo. That broader world … Continue reading →

You-Know-Who, the Coronavirus, and Science Denial Hypocrisy

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I saw a banned film this week! And it led to you-know-who! If you read this blog, you are likely familiar with NPR’s “Science Friday” show. You might have listened last Friday, May 15, and heard the segment called “Fact Check My Feed: Finding The Falsehoods In ‘Plandemic’”. For those of you who do not follow “Science Friday”—and who somehow have managed to miss all the rest of the hubbub over this—“Plandemic” is a video, a short film, if you will. It primarily consists of an interview with a scientist named Dr. Judy Mikovits. Mikovits has renegade ideas regarding the coronavirus, vaccines, and the medical world. Of course, your cousin Joey has renegade ideas about these things, too. But Mikovits is co-author of a book called Plague of Corruption that has a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine movement) and that has been the top seller on Amazon recently. I wanted to see the … Continue reading →

Science and Water, Then and Now

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You find science everywhere.  During the early eighteenth century Spanish Franciscans established a series of missions along the San Antonio River in what is now the U.S. state of Texas.  They ministered to the native Coahuiltecan people who lived there.  The San Antonio Missions are today active Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, while also being part of the San Antonio Missions National Park, and a UN World Heritage Site.  Thus, the missions are still there.  And, as a film that introduces visitors to the San Antonio Missions emphasizes, so are the Coahuiltecans who built the missions with the Franciscans; their descendants live all over the area. One of the missions, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción de Acuña, appeared in this blog last year (click here for that post) because the sun illuminates that church in an interesting way every Feast of the Assumption.  However, as I noted in that post, while arranging that sort of … Continue reading →

Astronomy in Art & Architecture: R. A. Rosenfeld’s Astronomical History Christmas Cards

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Greetings, Readers of Sacred Space Astronomy!  Check out the astronomical art below.  These are cards made by Randall A. Rosenfeld, who is the archivist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.  I’ve been fortunate enough to be on Randall’s Christmas mailing list for some years now, and have built up this small collection of original astronomical artwork as a result.  He graciously gave the OK for me to share them with Sacred Space Astronomy readers.  These scans do not look nearly as good as the originals, because the originals feature cool stuff like stars colored with metallic ink.  A scan just will not capture that sort of thing. Many of these illustrations are based on material found in historical books on astronomy.  I have included links to the originals in many cases.  Click on those links if you have time.  I think that you will be glad that you did. The card above is the most recent one Randall has … Continue reading →

Cutting Up: Math through Eyes of a Mathematician

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Over time I have had the pleasure of introducing to readers of Sacred Space Astronomy guest bloggers who are scientists, bishops, and worship directors.  Now I am pleased to introduce a mathematician.  Jeffrey Diller is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame (currently on leave, having finished up a term as chairperson of the Department of Mathematics there).  He studies dynamical systems that arise in a complex analysis context.  He also teaches: he was awarded the Fr. James L. Schilts, C.S.C./Doris and Eugene Leonard Teaching Award at Notre Dame in 2012, the Joyce/Kaneb Award for Undergraduate Teaching in 2015, 2008, and 2003.  Since I have been running a series of posts on the topic of mathematics, I wanted a mathematician to give a mathematician’ s perspective on what is great, and what is appealing, about mathematics.  Jeff tells me that he became interested in the topic of this post in part out of his recent experience as coordinator … Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Cities (and two churches, and two hotels, and an observatory)

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In 1934 Our Lady of Lourdes Church in West Baden Springs, Indiana was deemed structurally unsound, was pulled down, and was not rebuilt. A forest grows now where the church once stood. Revolving around Lourdes and its sister church, Our Lady of the Springs (still standing a mile or so down the road in the town of French Lick), is an interesting story about building a world we can live with. This story does involve some elements of what we usually think of as science—a Jesuit-run astronomical observatory is part of the story!—but it is mostly about science as considered more broadly: science as the process of looking carefully at the world around us and trying to measure it and to understand it and the rules by which it works, and to come up with ideas about it, on its terms, not on ours. It is a fascinating story, and one that may give us some good ideas for the … Continue reading →