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Christopher M. Graney

About Christopher M. Graney

Christopher M. Graney is an Adjunct Scholar at the Vatican Observatory, and 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. 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.

The Brightest Sun and the Darkest Morning of the Year

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Tomorrow (January 5) is Perihelion Day!  The Earth journeys around the sun in an orbit that is ever-so-slightly elliptical (the elliptical nature of the orbit is so mild that the orbit basically looks like a circle that is slightly off-center from the sun).  This means that the distance between the sun and the Earth varies over the course of a year.  Today is the day on which that distance is a minimum, and the technical term for the point of minimum distance between the Earth and sun is “perihelion.” Today is also the day of the brightest sun of the year.  Since the distance to the sun is a minimum then the apparent size of the sun in the sky is a maximum (of course, as with the much-ballyhooed “Super Moons” that we hear about all the time, this effect is not very great). A thing I like to point out about perihelion is that it is a true Global … Continue reading →

Blaise Pascal: to God through Math

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There is something whose existence is known to many, but that is infinite, and thus ultimately unknowable.  In the words of one person who has studied this thing extensively, exploring it is similar to exploring the universe.  We can learn more and more about it, and yet, because it is infinite, what we learn amounts to nothing in comparison to what there is to learn. The thing I am talking about here is pi (π): the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, as in C = πD.  The mathematician David Chudnovsky, who developed algorithms for calculating pi to billions of digits, made the comparison between it and the universe. Mathematics is a form of knowledge that is terribly undervalued today.  Try saying something really favorable about mathematics to a group of people.  See what reaction you get.  Even highly-educated people feel free to talk about how they do not like math or are not good at … Continue reading →

The Longest Night of the Year

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Today is the day of the December solstice in Louisville, Kentucky, where I live!  This is the day on which the sun reaches its southernmost point in its yearly journey through the stars (as seen from Earth), and the precise moment at which the sun reaches that point is 11:19 PM for people in Louisville.  But this moment occurs at 5:19 AM at Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican Observatory’s headquarters.  So in Italy, the solstice is on the 22nd in the early morning, while in Louisville the solstice is on the 21st at 11:19 PM. Since the sun is now at its southernmost point, then, in the northern hemisphere, where the Vatican Observatory’s telescopes are all located, the maximum daily altitude that the sun reaches (when it is at the point halfway between rising and setting) is the lowest of the whole year.  The length of the sun’s day-long arc above the horizon is therefore shortest.  Consequently, the length of time … Continue reading →

Kentucky Science Conversations – Public Outreach and Pubs

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I am pleased to introduce another “Kentucky Science Conversations” guest blogger:  Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky.  Gerry is the one whose efforts started the Kentucky Science Conversations with Louisville’s Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, that also involved Tim Dowling, Kate Bulinski, and me.  Dowling, Bulinksi, and Archbishop Kurtz have all written guest blogs for The Catholic Astronomer-Sacred Space Astronomy, so Gerry’ s post here rounds out the group. Gerry Williger got his Bachelor’s degree at Ohio State, then did a PhD at the University of Cambridge, England funded by a Marshall Scholarship. His thesis was on numerical simulations of intergalactic gas clouds, under Bob Carswell. He then worked as a post-doc at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, where he switched from doing theoretical work to observations, and followed that up with a post-doc at Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg. After eleven years abroad, he returned to the US to work on the Hubble Space … Continue reading →

The Darkest Evening of the Year

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Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. It is the darkest evening of the year!  You probably know about the December 21 solstice—it is the “winter solstice” in the northern hemisphere, and the “summer solstice” in the southern hemisphere.  In the northern hemisphere the December 21 solstice is the shortest day of the year; in the southern hemisphere it … Continue reading →

Smart Phones from Eels

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Have you used electrical technology today?  Something with a battery?  Something that sent information over wires?  Or wirelessly?  You surely used a smart phone, or the internet, or something plugged in to a wall outlet.  Perhaps you just listened to the radio. Where did this technology come from? The electric battery, so important to so many devices, started it all.  Alessandro Volta created the first one around the year 1800.  Studying electric eels led him to the principles of battery construction.  Volta’s battery (and yes, the term “voltage” comes from his name) was the first good way to generate a steady flow of electricity.  With it, electrical technology took off.  With batteries, people could communicate rapidly, by sending electrical signals over wires.  The telegraph was the start of that; now we have the internet.  We have electric cars, thanks to improvements both in batteries and in the electric motors that move those cars.  Michael Faraday’s discovery that electricity and magnetism … Continue reading →

Illuminating North America! (or, Anna and Fernando Find a Star)

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I am happy to re-introduce to readers of Sacred Space Astronomy to guest blogger Fernando Comerón. He is an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory. He previously wrote about using one of the world’s best telescopes at ESO (click here for that post). This new post is about discovering a star. Here Fernando describes the process of making a discovery in astronomy. But he also describes something else. He describes the excitement of discovery—of being one of only two people to know something, even if maybe it is, as he says, something most people might not care much about. Fernando Comerón, 9 Sept 2019 Please have a look at these two images, of two nebulae that may be well known to you. The one on the left is the Orion Nebula, and the right one is the North America nebula. In astrophysical terms, both nebulae are what astronomers call “HII regions”. “HII” means that they are mainly composed of ionized … Continue reading →

Errors Published for Children

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An abundance of erroneous information can be found in books.  Unfortunately, that includes science books for children.  Recently I have been perusing children’s science books, looking for good material for the Vatican Observatory Faith & Science site, and I keep coming across things like the images below—a page from Scientists Who Made History: Isaac Newton (published 2001 by Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers: A Harcourt Company).  This is from a section of the book that talks about Newton studying the motions of the planets. Note the caption that reads “An early diagram from the 1600s showing the movements of the planets, all of which are travelling around the Sun in the center of the illustration”.  But note that, in fact, the Sun is not in the center of the illustration.  The Earth is in the center.  It is not travelling around the Sun; the Sun is travelling around it. The diagram is of the theory of Tycho Brahe.  Brahe’s name can be … Continue reading →

Navy Jets Harassed by Magical Mermaid Tic Tac UFOs!

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Have you heard the news about the UFOs and the Navy pilots?  It has been covered by a variety of media outlets.  Years ago there existed a cheesy tabloid newspaper called the Weekly World News.  You could find copies for sale in the check-out lanes of grocery stores.  The front page of the WWN always featured some sort of bizarre story about half-human/half-bat creatures, or Bigfoot, or (of course) UFOs and Space Aliens.  The WWN is gone from the checkout lanes, but today it is the major news outlets that are providing coverage of UFOs and Space Aliens. The UFO coverage relates to U.S. Navy pilots who have reported encountering objects shaped like “Tic Tac” candies, but large (up to 40 feet long).  The Tic Tacs reportedly fly about and perform all sorts of incredible aerial maneuvers.   Just recently the Navy confirmed that certain video clips related to these reports (video clips that have been banging around the internet for … Continue reading →

Leonis Regis Sol

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A month or so ago I was picking on the new “Lion King” movie for how unrealistic was its depiction of the night sky, despite everything else in the movie seeming so realistic in appearance.  Well, I have discovered another interesting critique of the “Lion King” sky.  It was on the WRAL (North Carolina) Weathercenter Blog.  There Tony Rice writes that While the animals and landscapes in [the 2019 “Lion King”] are photorealistic, the sunrise that opens this shot-for-shot remake is less realistic than the hand-drawn original. Rice compares the 1994 and 2019 versions of the movie, providing images of the sunrise from both, and noting how the 2019 version does not show the pronounced rippling effect that is seen in the 1994 version.  He writes: In the 2019 [version] the sun is rounder, nearly white and emerges smoothly above the horizon. The 1994 version shows a deeper yellow, almost orange, more flattened sun rippling its way up.  The undulating … Continue reading →

Astronomy in Art & Architecture: Observatory Park and the Cathedral, Denver

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Consider the picture below for your top ten list of “things that you just do not see every day”.  Note the houses, the baseball game in the park, and… the observatory.  How often do you see a baseball game being played next to an observatory, in a park in a residential neighborhood? You might see it every summer day if you lived in a certain neighborhood south of downtown Denver (Colorado, USA).  This park—called “Observatory Park”—is indeed in a residential neighborhood, and it is the home of Chamberlin Observatory of the University of Denver.  The small building in the picture above is Chamberlin’s student observatory.  The view below, of the same student observatory but from the opposite direction, shows the main building. There is not just a baseball diamond near the observatory; behind the main building is a playground.  The playground features a bit of astronomy-themed art, which is of course appropriate for Observatory Park.  A very stylized solar system, … Continue reading →

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau – Google Doodle Scientist

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There is a new “Google Doodle” for a scientist today—Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau.  You have probably seen it.  Google states that his work “led to the birth of cinema”.  Well, guess what?  According to an old edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, Plateau was “a sincere Christian, faithful to all the duties of a practical Catholic”. If you are interested in his work, the journal Physics in Perspective published an article on him in 2012: “The Life and Work of Joseph Plateau: Father of Film and Discoverer of Surface Tension”.  Click here for an excerpt.  Click here to get the entire article from Physics in Perspective.  The entire article is also freely available via EBSCO, through many public and academic libraries. Plateau was born in 1801 and died in 1883.  According to Physics in Perspective, “Plateau dedicated himself passionately to the study of … soap membranes until 1844, when he gradually became blind.”  Thus for much of his career Plateau could … Continue reading →